#43: How to Add a Team Member to Your CRA Mighty Team of One

So, how do you best go about dividing and conquering the work of a CRA officer? Many people inherit the CRA program and still have compliance responsibilities or dabble in BSA or share the titles of CRA officer and fair lending officer. Usually if you're just a team of one or even a partial position, you really have to do it all. From CRA data collection to data integrity testing to lending performance analytics to collecting service, investment and community development activities….the list goes on and on.Many people try to, as they grow over time, advocate to add to staff. So when you do that, this is how you might determine to divide and conquer. So as a CRA officer, you would keep some of the core responsibilities of your job, like CRA data strategy, goal setting, executive management engagement and, of course, working with compliance and risk management at a higher level. For CRA data integrity, you would continue monitoring your performance analytics blending service and investments, engaging with the lines of businesses, looking for and managing the exam prep activities and navigating regulatory change.And when you are able to “add to staff” and hire a CRA program administrator, or CRA deputy officer, the duties rebalance. You could have this person take on the data integrity aspects of extracting lending activity from your core system input, scrubbing it and importing into a CRA proprietary database. They might also do the first review and then you do a test review of the CRA data integrity.The CRA administrator would collect all the service activities and investment activities, and they can mine for community development loans. They would be creating the lists, the spreadsheets, or inputting into cadence software. They'll also be responsible for the technical compliance aspects of the CRA and managing your policies and procedures. So, there are definitely ways that you can delegate work between a CRA officer and an administrator to support your CRA program.I hope this helps at least differentiate how you might add to staff so that you can start to create your business case, to add an FTE to your team, to your mighty team of one.CRA Today helps bankers master the Community Reinvestment Act, get exam ready, and change lives through the power of community development.Want to learn the CRA basics? Sign up for CRA Essentials Live! A live webinar with Linda Ezuka that shares everything you need to create a solid foundation for your CRA journey. https://hub.cratoday.com/freewebinarReady to take a deeper dive into the CRA? Join your fellow CRA enthusiasts in the CRA Hub as we navigate regulatory change, study core CRA concepts and connect as community development professionals across the nation.https://cratoday.com/hub/Are you understating your lending performance? Learn the 5 Foundational Steps to Building an Outstanding Community Development Loan Portfolio with an on-demand training workshop.https://cratoday.com/blueprint/CRA Today Website: https://cratoday.com/ Linda Ezuka, LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/linda-ezuka-cra-today/Copyright © 2021 by CRA Today LLC(No claim to original U.S. government material)All rights reserved. No part of this podcast may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the author and publisher.This podcast is a periodic publication of CRA Today LLC and is intended to notify and inspire recipients of new developments in the Community Reinvestment Act. It should not be construed as legal advice or legal opinion on any specific facts or circumstances. The contents are intended for general informational purposes only, and you are urged to consult your own attorney concerning your situation and specific legal questions you have.Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm