01/17/2005
The only procedures we have in place for background information on new hires is to pull a credit report and verify references.Can you please share with me some other sources/avenues that you would use in doing background checks on employees?
08/04/2003
As it relates to IT examinations, what are the top "hot buttons" for regulators?
03/04/2002
Borrower is a corporation with one shareholder. All business assets are pledged as collateral. Lender wants the spouse to also sign on loan docs, with the concern being that she may gain ownership of at least 1/2 assets should they divorce. Would asking her to sign be a violation of Reg B? If so, does the lender have a bona fide concern regarding assets or does the fact that the borrower is a coporation make this a non-issue? Flip side: What about if the borrower was a partnership or sole proprietorship and the spouse has no role in the affairs or function of the business? (e.g., farmer Bob who takes a loan secured by crops.) Lender wants to add wife to loan as a condition for the same reasons listed above. How should I advise my lender?
11/05/2001
Other business costs are falling while marketing costs are rising. Yet, response rates to many traditional marketing and sales techniques are off. There is growing impatience with a function of business that is costing more, delivering less and resists accountability. In addition,baby boomer and older consumers (37+) are the wealthiest, best educated and most sophisticated of purchasers and marketing and sales communications are not creating motivating communications, effective sales presentations and service improvement programs to better capture and keep these consumers. A Coopers and Lybrand study found in a study of 100 leading companies that marketing departments tend to be "ill-focused and over-indulged" with department heads who "overstated their contribution to the company, but could not specify what the nature of the contribution was." A 1995 McKinsey report somberly warned, "Doubts are surfacing about the very basis of contemporary marketing." The report charged marketing departments with generating "few new ideas," being "unimaginative," and failing to "pick up the right signals." Finally, Kevin Clancy and Robert Shulman, both formerly with consumer researcher Yankelovich Clancy Shulman predict a marketing revolution "because failure is self-evident and everybody -- stockholders, directors, CEOs, customers, the government -- is angry because marketing, which should be driving business, doesn't work."Now that the adult median age is in the mid-40s and continuing to rise, pressure is building on bank marketing and sales to learn how to better market to a dominantly older consumer population. Though we don't notice it happening -- any more than a child notices that he has grown an inch taller during the summer -- changes take place across our full life span in how information is processed by our brains (which process information sent to it by the five senses) and the mind (where thinking takes place). How a 30-year-old mind processes the contents of a commercial, print ad or direct mail piece will be markedly different from how a 50- or 60-year-old mind processes the same information. Is there literature or other information available to help bank marketers communicate more effectively with the 37+ markets?
01/15/2001
We have a loan request from a company contemplating that one of our outside directors would guarantee the loan. What would be the treatment of the loan under Federal Reserve Regulation O?