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Have a safe and happy holiday week! Hopefully, you’ve already started your brief, yet likely well-deserved, time away from the office and will read this when you return. But for the others like me still putting in hours until tomorrow’s national holiday, now’s an excellent time to focus on a topic many of us highly prioritize – security. While safety and security this weekend will deal more with properly handling fireworks or ensuring everyone follows the recommended precautions if you’re out on the water, it also makes sense to focus on how your loan origination system should help your financial institution effectively mitigate exposure to fraud.

For all of the football fans who subscribe to our blog, Sunday's big game will have your full attention. Even if you're not a football fan, the odds are pretty likely that you'll check it in some form or fashion to see the commercials or whoever performs at halftime. In last year's game, one team took a calculated risk by running a trick play that ultimately led it to victory (Philly special). Success on the football field, much like the real world, involves limiting risk while also at times using it to an advantage. Risk can come from anywhere. It can change at any moment and often be difficult to predict. For many financial institutions these days, risk management and control are split across multiple departments within an organization. Because these departments need structure, as well as checks and balances to properly management risk, the most successful institutions use a risk management strategy/model based on three lines of defense. This approach is an effective way to assign duties and coordinate various teams involved in the risk management and control process.