It was a day of celebration yesterday, as Grasshopper Bank completed its journey from conception to implementation. Grasshopper Bank is the first new bank to open in New York City since the housing crisis of 2008. The “C-Suite” team is led by CEO Judith Erwin, and some of the top women in the banking industry are the lights guiding this financial institution. The dynamic team, composed of industry heavyweights who have over 200 years of combined experience in commercial banking and financial services, raised close to $100 million in order to obtain OCC* approval. The bank will focus on New York’s “innovation economy,” with corporate, venture capital, and start-up clients.
I played a crucial role in helping the new bank obtain approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and make it to the starting line. I developed over 50 required standard operating procedures, working with various roles across the bank to determine procedures that would guide staff to perform all daily operations tasks in compliance with federal banking regulations. I brought my expertise in T24 to the task, and helped develop and document software requirements as well as procedures. My role included business analysis and training as well as technical writing, and I helped the team learn end-to-end processes for all daily and monthly procedures, from taking a deposit and boarding a loan to generating a financial statement.
I worked closely with the Chief Risk Officer, Sally Myers, to develop the required procedures to provide oversight from a risk mitigation and compliance perspective. I worked with CFO Sangeeta Kishore to ensure that the Operations team provided all required data and reports to her desk in a timely manner.
It was an exhilarating challenge and a great deal of fun, working with a fantastic team of people in an extremely dynamic, fast-paced environment. My daily compadres were the Operations team, under COO Gary Blumenthal, and it was a real pleasure to work with this group to ensure they would be able to perform all required tasks on day one.
We focused on the user experience (UX) to ensure that staff and customers will love using the bank’s internal and external banking tools, developed for mobile and the web. The team of T24 consultants under Nikki Nelson were amazing to work with, and they were instrumental in bringing the bank to the point of opening the doors yesterday.
I wish the wonderful folks at Grasshopper Bank every success as they open their doors for business. Mazel tov!
*The OCC is an independent bureau within the United States Department of the Treasury that was established by the National Currency Act of 1863 and serves to charter, regulate, and supervise all national banks and thrift institutions and the federally licensed branches and agencies of foreign banks in the United States.