Compliance can feel like all stick and no carrot. Like a referee ready to throw a yellow card if your appraisal department doesn’t have standardized processes. Compliance demands “repeatable proof,” not just “professional judgment.”
Reasons compliance feels annoying: the goalposts keep shifting, anything less than perfect gets punished and it often feels like a spotlight instead of a safety net.
Valuable outcomes of compliance: protects the bank’s reputation, aligns the bank around risk and reduces fire drills. Compliance also shapes and exposes appraisal quality.
A Matter Requiring Attention (MRA) is a formal warning from the OCC, FDIC, or Federal Reserve that your bank has a weakness that could create risk. You must fix it by a set deadline and prove you completed the correction.
At our latest FIVA meeting, Kylee Durbin and Ginger McCullough from Forvis Mazars made bank compliance feel clear and practical. They showed how appraisal teams can shift from cost centers to strategic partners.
As I listened, I thought about SWOT. At first, valuation felt like it lived in “Threats” and “Weaknesses,” but it hit me. Valuation is actually a major Opportunity.
Appraisers are the smartest people in the room when it comes to real estate. They see a ton of deal flow to spot patterns early. Insights that guide smarter lending decisions, highlight emerging opportunities and flag risks before they become problems.
Realwired’s YouConnect turns compliance from a fire drill into a fast answer. Instead of spending 10 hours proving appraisal quality, you can show it in 10 seconds. That’s how a chief appraiser moves from “cost center” to indispensable partner.
What’s one “yellow card” issue that needs your attention right now?