James R. Causey

Jim Causey, a Senior Advisor with Treliant, contributes to Treliant’s Enterprise Risk Management and Regulatory Applications practice. He is an experienced executive with corporate finance, strategic advisory, enterprise risk, operations, and corporate, consumer, and financial crimes compliance experience with banks, FinTechs, and other financial services firms.

Jim has an extensive history in corporate finance and capital transactions stemming from his 20 years of consulting and investment banking as Managing Director with Kaplan, Smith & Associates, a nationwide consulting and financial advisory firm, and Credit Suisse First Boston, an investment banking firm that acquired Kaplan Smith. He is a recognized expert in supporting regulatory change of control and new bank start-up applications and business plans, including with respect to full service banks, limited purpose credit card banks, trust banks, and wholesale institutions. Jim also has substantial experience in negotiating and valuing bank and nonbank merger and acquisition transactions.

Past engagements include reviewing various governance and compliance elements of a large international bank’s Interbank Offered Rate (IBOR) compliance framework as part of a monitorship of the bank; helping a large international bank prepare for a targeted Regulation W examination of transactions between the bank and its affiliates, conducted by a joint Federal Reserve, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) examination team; performing compliance management program assessments for Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) firms and various marketplace lenders; assisting banks in the remediation of regulatory enforcement actions, including with respect to credit card add-on products; helping a mid-sized bank assess the adequacy of its internal controls over regulatory reporting; and helping a mid-sized bank validate its Dodd-Frank Act Stress Test (DFAST) models for operational risk. Jim is also a recognized expert in valuing marketing services agreements and benchmarking the pricing of settlement services under Section 8 of the Real Estate Procedures Settlement Act (RESPA) and Regulation X.

As a former Director, Chief Financial Officer, and Chief Retail Banking Officer for two community banks, including one that operated a nationwide mortgage lending business, Jim has over 40 years of experience, including overseeing regulatory Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), consumer compliance, and safety and soundness (including AML/BSA/OFAC) examinations), enabling him to provide strategic and practical advice to financial firms on the challenges they face today. He has also provided litigation support and expert testimony in a number of matters. In addition, he has published various articles on risk management.

Jim holds an MA in Economics from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, and a BA in American Studies and English from Millikin University in Decatur, Illinois. He is also a Certified Regulatory Compliance Manager (CRCM) and a Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist (CAMS).