United Southeast Federal Credit Union celebrates and enjoys an environment of collaboration and trust among our local credit unions. For the second year, USFCU and Kingsport Press Credit Union sponsored a Winter Training Event on Monday, Jan. 15. Local credit unions came together to hear experts in their respective fields.
Gary King, board chairman for United Southeast Federal Credit Union, and Shelly Brown, president/CEO for United Southeast Federal Credit Union, welcomed East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia credit unions to the historic Bristol Train Station in Bristol, Va.
Attendees included employees and several board members from the following credit unions:
- Bristol Virginia School Systems Federal Credit Union
- Kingsport Press Credit Union
- Mountain Empire Federal Credit Union
- SunComp Employees Federal Credit Union
- United Southeast Federal Credit Union
Kim Bohannon, chief innovation officer at the Tennessee Credit Union League, launched the day of training with a motivational moment about the role of service, grace and empathy as we work with our members and our co-workers. Kim rounded out the morning training portion with BSA, OFAC and regulatory training.
Special agent and field supervisor, Andy Crabtree, with the Knoxville Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, led the group into the second session with enlightening details and centered awareness to active scams across the United States. Specific areas of discussion included elder fraud and the financial impact on individuals and financial institutions, the most common fraud schemes in Tennessee and open discussion about ways we can work together to address these threats.
The training day concluded with Barry Lewis, senior director with Trellance. Hot topics and trends, such as cybersecurity risks, phishing, business email compromise, ransomware, AI and ML, along with ongoing system and compliance training were discussed at length with the group. What are the best practices to combat all of these risks? Training every team member to be the human firewall, along with system email protection, network segmentation, backups and a strong vendor management program.
“The value of having a networking opportunity and completing required training is a double-win for our credit union” as quoted by one of the credit union leaders.
We can all agree that financial institution-required training is a must. The message may not be as exciting as the best New York Times novel, but the delivery can be as creative and engaging as a best read! Thank you to each of the 85 credit union employees, experts, trainers and board members who made 2024’s training event a success—a collaborative event under one roof to hear from seasoned experts for a best of the best training experience.
