Profile: People’s Bank implements Basel II

Bridgeport, Connecticut -- While the discipline of operational risk may be in its infancy at most US community banks, a study by the Phila-delphia-based Risk Management Association shows a handful of these institutions are pushing ahead and developing frameworks geared towards their lesser size and complexity. For example, People’s Bank, the largest independent community bank in Connecticut, with $12 billion in assets, is using the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision’s Sound practices for the management and supervision of operational risk to construct an op risk framework.

According to Ken Weinstein, senior vice-president for operational risk management at the bank, the document “raised our organisational consciousness about operational risk management and gave us a great head start by laying out a structure and best practices that we could learn from in designing our approach. It probably saved a year or more of experimentation and debate in getting our process up