Certified Regulatory Compliance Manager (CRCM) Practice Exam

About Certified Regulatory Compliance Manager CRCM Practice Exam

The CRCM certification demonstrates your expertise in the regulatory compliance field. Compliance professionals with a minimum of three years’ experience who have completed approved training programs are eligible. To earn the Certified Regulatory Compliance Manager (CRCM) designation, candidates must -

• Meet the eligibility requirements
  
• Submit completed application and fees for desired exam date
• Pass the CRCM examination.

Exam Details

• 200 multiple-choice questions
• Maximum 4 hour timeframe allowed
• Calculators will be provided
• Instant "Pass/Fail" outcome provided for computer-based exams at a testing center
• Official score reports delivered via email within 4 weeks after the close of the exam window 
• For full details, read the Certification Exam FAQs 
• Knowledge Areas

Exam Pre-requisites

The CRCM advisory board has determined that a competent compliance professional’s expertise includes regulatory knowledge leveraged through a task-based approach in the given areas -

• Credit 
  
• Deposits
• Bank Operations
• Financial Crimes
• CRA
• Privacy

CRCM Examination Outline

The CRCM covers the latest updated course outline - 

Module 1: Overview of Assessment and Management of Compliance Risk (28%)

• Learn skills to act as a compliance subject matter expert on projects and committees.
• Ability to assess the development of, or changes to, products, services, processes, and systems
• Ability to determine compliance risk and impacts and ensure policies remain compliant.
• Develop skills to offer compliance support to internal and external parties
• Ability to review and/or provide compliance training to applicable parties.
• Ability to conduct due diligence for vendors.
• Develop skills to design and maintain a comprehensive compliance risk assessment program for identifying and mitigating risk within the organization’s risk appetite.
• Ability to conduct compliance risk assessments in accordance with the risk assessment program 

Module 2: Overview of Compliance Monitoring (25%)

• Ability to define the scope of a specific monitoring or testing activity.
• Ability to test compliance policies, procedures, controls, and transactions against regulatory requirements
• Ability to identify risks and potential exceptions.
• Ability to review and confirm potential exceptions, findings, and recommendations with business units
• Develop and issue a final report to senior management.
• Ability to validate that any required remediation was completed accurately and within required timelines.
• Ability to assist a complaint management program.
• Ability to review first-line compliance monitoring results and develop an action plan as needed.
• Ability to evaluate the reliability of systems of record and the validity of data within those systems that are used for compliance monitoring.

Module 3: Overview of Governance and Oversight (10%)

• Develop skills to establish and maintain a compliance management policy
• Ability to set expectations for board, senior management, and business unit responsibilities.
• Ability to develop, conduct, and track enterprise-wide and/or job-specific compliance training.
• Ability to conduct periodic reviews of the compliance management program
• Ability to evaluate the effectiveness of the program and communicate results to appropriate parties.

Module 4: Overview of Regulatory Change Management (15%)

• Ability to monitor and evaluate applicable regulatory agency notifications for new compliance regulations
• Ability to amend existing regulations to assess potential regulatory impacts and remediation needs.
• Ability to assess new, revised, or proposed regulatory changes for compliance impacts, communicate to the appropriate parties
• Ability to develop action plans as needed.
• Ability to assess regulatory guidance and compliance enforcement actions
• Ability to determine if remediation is required to address potential compliance impacts.
• Ability to report on the status of regulatory changes and implementation to appropriate parties.
• Ability to monitor and validate action plans for confirmed regulatory impacts to ensure timely adherence to the mandatory compliance date.

Module 5: Regulator and Auditor Compliance Management (11%)

• Ability to prepare and review requested audit/exam materials to ensure timely and accurate fulfilment
• Ability to participate in audit/exam meetings to provide business overviews, address questions, discuss findings, or provide updates to appropriate parties.
• Ability to review and draft responses to audit/exam results
• Ability to ensure action plans are developed and communicated to appropriate parties.
• Ability to report on action plan status to appropriate levels of management and auditors/examiners.
• Ability to coordinate and submit ongoing regulatory reports to auditors/examiners.

Module 6: Overview of Compliance Analysis and Internal/External Reporting (11%)

• Ability to analyze and validate data to support regulatory reporting and ensure accuracy and comprehensiveness.
• Ability to complete required reporting, ensure timely submission to the appropriate agency, and resubmit when required.
• Ability to develop, implement, and monitor a plan of action to prevent future reporting errors or breakdowns.

Candidates are required to meet the following eligibility requirements by the time that you take the exam. ABA will accept your application with education/training that is scheduled to be completed by your exam date. ABA certifications are based on U.S. laws and regulations and are therefore not offered outside the U.S.

Experience Tiers

FIRST OPTION: 3+ YEARS OF EXPERIENCE

Candidates are required to have Three (3) years minimum of U.S. experience as a compliance professional AND completion of TWO of the following compliance-related training options, all within the last five (5) years -

• ABA Compliance School - Foundational
  
• ABA Compliance School - Intermediate
• Compliance Professionals Certificates (4 Total) New!
• CRCM Exam Online Prep
• ABA In-Bank Compliance Schools
• 30 credits (1 credit = 50 minutes) of compliance training directly related to US laws and regulations on the CRCM Examination Outline. See Training Credit Options below for training examples. 
• ABA Certificate in Deposit Compliance and ABA Certificate in Lending Compliance (NOT available for purchase after July 2022) If you have already registered for and/or completed these two legacy certificates, they will count towards the eligibility requirement until July 2023.

SECOND OPTION: 6+ YEARS OF EXPERIENCE

• Candidates are required to have six (6) or more years of U.S. experience as a compliance professional within the last ten (10) years.  Three (3) of the six years must be within the last five (5) years.

Professional Experience

A compliance manager's responsibilities generally include direct compliance risk program management and/or validation of compliance risk control effectiveness. The execution of operational business processes incorporating compliance risk controls is not a function or duty generally performed by a compliance manager as a normal and customary job responsibility and thus does not qualify towards meeting the experience requirement.

To satisfy the Professional Experience requirement, primary responsibility for the full range of compliance risk functions is required. Compliance risk functions include, but are not limited to - 

• Performing compliance risk assessments, audits or examinations,
• Developing, implementing, and/or managing all aspects of a compliance risk management program to ensure compliance with U.S. federal laws and regulations.
  

These jobs are typically found within corporate compliance, legal, audit departments (internal or external), Regulatory Agencies, or dedicated compliance practices within consulting firms. Job responsibilities must be primarily focused on compliance risk management -

• Program design, implementation and oversight,
  
• Consultation as a subject-matter expert,
• Administration, enforcement or audit of compliance-related policies, procedures and processes to manage compliance risk, and/or
• Examination of a bank's compliance program.

Training Credit Options

Credits may be obtained by attending conferences, seminars, and compliance schools or participating in online training and webinars that are directly related to the laws and regulations on the CRCM Examination Outline. Training can be sponsored by the ABA, your employer or an outside training provider.

The following are examples of training that counts toward the 30 credits of compliance-related training option. Credits may vary depending on the year you completed one of the ABA events.

Ethics Statement

Each candidate must sign ABA Professional Certifications' Code of Ethics statement. Please note: you must furnish all pertinent information about any convictions or pleas of nolo contendere on the grounds of fraud, embezzlement, unfair or deceptive practices, securities law violations, misappropriation of property, fraudulent conversations or any civil or administrative action from which you have been previously found liable.

Exam Retakes

• You must wait a minimum of 90 days before you are allowed to retake an exam on the next scheduled exam date.
• There is no limit to the number of times you can take the exam.
• You must pass the exam within a 3 year period from the date of your first exam attempt or a new application and fee is required.
• Please apply to retake the exam by logging in to the Certification Manager. You must log in using the same user id and password that you used to register for your previous exam attempt(s).
• Upon login, the retake options and pricing will display if you have previously taken this exam. After completing your purchase, please complete the retake application and submit by the application due date for the desired exam date.