How This Director of Compliance Manages Multiple Bank’s CRA Programs At Once

Managing one CRA program is hard enough. Can you imagine overseeing four at once? 

“It isn’t easy,” says Tonia Taylor, SVP and Director of Compliance at QCR Holdings, a holding company that owns four separate chartered banks. 

That’s right. Tonia oversees four separate CRA programs and compliance departments. Not only that, but Tonia coordinates the CRA exams, provides compliance training to over 1,000 employees, oversees policies and procedures, manages complaints, and monitors the compliance integrity of the banks.  

As you can imagine, this isn’t an easy job. QCRH used to use paper and binders to track all their data. It was a mess. When Tonia was finally given the opportunity to buy software in 2019, Kadince was her go-to vendor. 

At first, it was a challenge to adopt Kadince across all four banks. Leadership didn’t understand why Tonia wanted to change. Paper and binders had worked for 20 years, why not anymore? They didn’t understand the regulatory requirements, and they weren’t in the data every day like Tonia was. Ultimately, she convinced them that it was better to take this one cost and split it four ways between their banks rather than hire more people to manage all the data. Once they saw the system, they were on board.

With Kadince finally approved, Tonia’s team struggled with the implementation process. “It wasn’t Kadince’s fault,” Tonia says. “When you start with a mess, you have to clean it up for a new system. We had a lot of clean up to do. We decided to do one bank at a time, so it took over a year to get everyone on the same page. Now that we’re here, though, everything is so much smoother.”

Now, QCRH uses Kadince software to manage volunteers, investments, donations, and community development lending. Tonia can’t imagine leaving the Kadince environment she’s built. “It’s just what we needed to manage all this data,” she says.

General Kadince dashboard

And what comes with four separate CRA programs? Four separate CRA exams. 

“We’re on a continuous rotation of exams,” Tonia says. “When one exam ends, it seems like another is just beginning. And by the time we get through all four, we’re back to the first.” 

Because QCRH is on a rotating exam schedule, Tonia has gotten to know some of the examiners very well. “We go through exams with a lot of the same examiners,” Tonia says. “I’ve trained them to use Kadince.”

From her first exam using Kadince, Tonia says the process was smooth. “Shannon (our Kadince Customer Success Manager) helped us figure out ways to train these third-party reviewers. We set up a role called ‘External Reviewers,’ and this is how we assign any examiner that needs access to our Kadince system. We can set examiners up in less than an hour, and they’re always shocked when I tell them this.”

“Examiners love that we upload everything as attachments,” Tonia continues. “They don’t have to dig through hundreds of loan docs because we’ve already uploaded everything they need into Kadince. And I love that examiners don’t get to snoop around. The ‘External Reviewers’ role we assign keeps them focused. It allows them to see what they need to, but not everything in our Kadince database.”

For the last few years, all four QCRH banks have received a Satisfactory or an Outstanding rating on their exams. “We always celebrate within the bank,” Tonia says. “CRA is administratively heavy. When you’re stuck keeping the documentation current and accurate, it doesn’t allow you to focus on being innovative or getting out in the community. By reducing our administrative burden with Kadince, our staff has been able to go out into the community and figure out what our areas need. We’re fortunate to have a leadership team that believes in this mission and allows us to give the communities the time and attention they need while still keeping us profitable. We’re able to do what we do best, which is take care of our community.”

When asked what she loves most about Kadince, Tonia said, “I saw Shannon and Bailey at a conference in Texas recently. There were over 3,000 people there, but when they saw me, they knew my name and wanted to chat. That’s amazing! My Kadince support team regularly calls me to check in, and when I mentioned that one of my employees has cancer, they sent her a gift at home. This doesn’t happen with other vendors. Whatever Kadince’s secret sauce is, keep it up! Not everybody has it.”

Want to see how Kadince can help your institution track and manage volunteers, investments, donations, community development lending, and more? Whether you run one CRA program or a dozen, Kadince has got your back. Schedule a demo today.

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To learn about the recent CRA rule change and what you should do now, check out this article.

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