COLUMBUS, Ohio — During Corporate One Federal Credit Union's Enterprise Wide Risk Management Conference held April 30-May 2 in Las Vegas, NCUA Vice Chairman Rodney Hood stressed the need to look at the big picture when it comes to risk.

He emphasized the importance of identifying the risks associated with credit unions' strategic initiatives and the necessity to manage those risks to enhance credit union performance. “I firmly believe that enterprise risk management enables management to effectively deal with uncertainty and associated risks and opportunities by enhancing a credit union's ability to build member-owner value,” Hood said.

Corporate One Chief Risk Officer Joseph Ghammashi provided attendees with an overview of EWRM and several risk management frameworks, demonstrated the differences between compliance and EWRM, and discussed how an organization's EWRM processes can be used to govern risk taking and mitigation.

“Enterprise wide risk management goes well beyond compliance,” Corporate One President/CEO Lee Butke said of his corporate's experience adopting EWRM over the last couple of years. “Credit unions that employ EWRM improve their overall safety and soundness and increase their efficiency across the entire organization.”

Corporate One's conference, a three-day summit on how credit unions can adopt enterprise wide risk management, also featured former House Financial Services Committee Chairman Michael Oxley; Joseph Herr, director of innovative services for Jefferson Wells, a management company focused on providing professional services related to risk management; and Stephen Minsky, CEO/founder of Logic Manager, a leading provider of consulting services and configurable software solutions for EWRM.