Easily, the hottest regulatory topic of the past seven years is CECL. On top of the long-term lead up, the regulations and deadlines have changed so many times that many institutions hoped the requirement would disappear altogether. However, as of January 1, 2023, CECL is a reality. So, how confident are you in the solution and CECL reporting tools your bank or credit union have decided to implement?
CECL is coming soon and isn’t going away. However, many financial institutions have not yet solidified their CECL plans. Maybe your CECL Committee was overwhelmed with choosing a solution, attentions/resources were diverted to pandemic recovery, or maybe busy day-to-day responsibilities and running your bank or credit union unintentionally let CECL slide to the backburner.
Though it’s been a stressful topic for years, Plansmith has made the process of adopting CECL as simple as possible. In fact, almost 300 organizations have already purchased and implemented our CECL solution.
2020 was an unprecedented year. Just when you finished creating a budget, it was decimated by the economic crisis. From there, time was spent reforecasting, helping allocate PPP loans, and adjusting to changing rate environments. Fast forward a year, and we’re slowly starting to get back to business as usual.
In addition to the usual financial planning, what do regulators want you to focus on in 2021? For most financial institutions, it’s going to be CECL.
By now, you’re probably wondering what to do about CECL. Although it’s been delayed, the fact is that CECL is still happening. In our educated opinion, now is the time to start finalizing CECL plans.
Here are four reasons why we believe financial institutions shouldn’t wait to implement CECL.
Over the past 20 years I’ve experienced the usual ups and downs of home ownership. A leaky roof, a flooded basement, as well as the two-week bathroom remodel that turned into an eight-week job. I’ve seen it all. At first, I tried to tackle many home projects on my own. I soon discovered that I was a pretty good painter and a really bad plumber. After I accidentally caused an upstairs toilet to leak into the family room ceiling, I resolved to get help from a trusted plumber that had the proper tools and know-how to get any plumbing job done right.
For almost 50 years, Plansmith has helped financial institutions remove the stress from budgeting and interest rate risk.
As customer preferences and regulatory challenges progress, we create new solutions to complement our core in-house budgeting and IRR solutions.
Are you familiar with all of the ways Plansmith helps financial institutions like yours?
After almost 50 years in the biz, we've learned a thing or two about banking. And since most of our employees have spent time in the industry, we know the heavy hitters that keep bankers up at night.
That's why we designed our business around one specific goal: giving our clients one less thing to worry about.
I watched the CECL WARM Method webinar provided by FASB and the regulatory agencies. I thought the webinar provided a very thorough review of the Weighted-Average Remaining Maturity (WARM) Method. If you haven’t had a chance to watch it yet, click here to view it now.
FASB Approves WARM Methodology for CECL
Community banks and credit unions looking for practical advice on how to implement the new CECL standard received a helping hand from the agency that authored the oft dreaded accounting rule. In a January 2019 Staff Q&A, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) stated that the weighted average remaining maturity (WARM) method is an acceptable method for less complex financial institutions to estimate expected credit losses. The FASB Q&A Comment also provided a couple different examples on the application of the WARM methodology to comply with CECL, and these examples do a good job of explaining the mathematics behind the calculation. If you haven’t done so already, you can read the FASB Q&A Comment here.
Another great year has gone by, the stock market notwithstanding. With the number of banks and credit unions continuing to shrink, the cream is rising to the top. The quality of the remaining institutions is getting better.