A low-tech armed robbery prompted a Houston credit union todeploy some high-tech policy monitoring to help prevent future suchoccurrences while keeping within the limits of the law itself.

First Service CU responded to the June 2009 holdup by deployingan automated compliance package designed to guarantee that controlssuch as alarm testing and inventory of bait money are in place ateach of the credit union's 10 locations around Harris County.

“Together with our senior vice president of IT, I worked on acredit union-wide assessment of our security and compliancepolicies, which showed a definite need for FSCU to automateprocedures, organize our control policies and create consistencyamong all branches,” said Sid Zahn, vice president of complianceand internal audit at the Texas credit union.