Karin O’Brien
Vice President, BSA/Fraud Officer, Newtown Savings Bank
Age: 53
Industry experience: 25 years
The Connecticut Bankers Association this month will honor its 2020 New Leaders in Banking, and Newtown Savings Bank’s Karin O’Brien will be among the honorees. Though recognized as a new leader, the third-generation banker has a long history in the industry, having followed her father and grandfather into banking when she took a summer job during college at the Bank of New York. She stepped away for a time to run her own retail business and then returned, appreciating anew the process, procedure and compliance associated with banking. Joining Newtown Savings Bank in 2015, O’Brien has a dual role overseeing fraud and the Bank Secrecy Act.
Q: What does your job involve?
A: I am the BSA officer and the fraud officer. Bank Secrecy really requires our monitoring to ensure no suspicious activity as transactions are flowing through our bank. The fraud involves stopping the crimes – financial crimes – and doing financial investigations. It’s quite busy every day.
Q: What does a typical day look like for you?
A: That’s hard to say. There is monitoring that is going on in both sides of the house – our BSA and our fraud sides. Unfortunately, a fraud could blow up an entire day. If you have a financial crime impacting the bank, my day would be investigating, working with local authorities, even working with the FBI. There is no typical day, really. Safeguarding and protecting the bank and customers – that is our job.
I love what I do, but never when I walk in the room does anyone say, “Oh, great. Karin’s here!” They always say, “Oh no, why are you here?”
Q: How has the job changed in recent years?
A: I find, being in banking for quite a long time, that the regulatory side of it is very strict. That’s always changing and growing. There’s a lot of compliance required. That is where I see the biggest change. There are rules and foundations set to ensure everyone is adhering to what the requirements are, and it helps set the precedent for how we operate and manage every day.
Q: What fraud issues do community banks face?
A: A community bank or a large global bank – we all face the same financial crimes coming at us, the biggest one being online. Strengthening tools that we have to stop and detect the frauds before they happen – that is the greatest challenge. We know industry-wide with the issuance of chip cards a few years ago that check fraud has grown. And we all know that the crimes being committed even by the gangs have moved into banking with check fraud crimes. So that is something we all face, no matter the size of your institution.
I think the benefit of being a community bank, especially where I am at Newtown Savings Bank, is knowing our customer. That is the key. We do know our customers, so early detection sometimes happens sooner because of that. Seeing things out of pattern and knowing who’s coming into our branches are very important.
Q: What are some tools to address fraud?
A: These continue to grow and are ever-changing. One thing that has really advanced is monitoring for debit card activity and stopping fraud before it occurs. That’s been out there for a while now, but it has helped stop fraud before it happens.
The other thing is educating the customers and having customers using online banking for their own protection, going into their accounts and monitoring their accounts and monitoring their activity. So if somebody did compromise an account, a customer also is watching. That is part of educating everyone to manage their own money and their own account. People are paying closer attention to what’s happening on their accounts. That’s important.
Q: What fraud concerns do businesses face?
A: For businesses, there are tools such as Positive Pay, where companies can use software to protect the checks clearing their accounts. So these things are very helpful for the industry and have been out there, but more and more smaller businesses are coming online to utilize them.
I think the fraudsters expect that small businesses don’t have different levels of security or sets of eyes looking at transactions. They might be relying too heavily on just one person. We educate our businesses to ensure that they always have dual control processes.
Q: Not all seniors are comfortable online. What are some approaches to fraud with this population?
A: Educating consumers is very important, so at Newtown Savings Bank we do hold training classes for them. AARP offers fantastic fraud resources for seniors. We do try to get that message out to our customer base. We want them to become educated and empowered to protect themselves.
Even in the media, on the news, there are always consumer alerts going out that people need to pay attention to. I think that’s the difference – that everyone gets the message out to try to protect people and not be as trusting. We’ve all heard all the scams that happen out there. Education is the key.
Q: You’re one of the CBA’s New Leaders in Banking. What will banking leadership look like in the new decade?
A: I really think the foundation of being respectful, kindness, being professional – that doesn’t change through what decade it is. I think that is true, and I think there’s a lot of misconceptions about how we should treat younger workers. I’ve attended leadership training where we’re told to be considerate of technology and that young adults need their phones to access. I don’t actually buy into all that. I think if you give your staff direction and expectation and lead them to what the requirements are of the job, they will meet them as long as you treat them with that kindness and respect everyone deserves.
O’Brien’s Five Favorite Vacations:
- The beach, anywhere – I love being at the beach
- Walt Disney World and Universal Studios, Orlando
- Parks and hiking trips
- California’s coastline
- Loon Lake in Chestertown, New York – a special family vacation spot
