Judith L. Hoerst
Sharps Chapel,TN
Summary
Senior-level banking operations executive with over 15 years of experience in payments, including international and domestic funds transfer and ACH, remote deposit capture, positive pay, analysis, trade services, product implementation, and foreign exchange operations. Recognized as a strategic and client-focused leader who consistently delivers exceptional business results. Skilled in driving employee engagement, increasing productivity, enhancing quality, fostering collaborative partnerships, and implementing well-managed business practices. Demonstrated expertise in risk mitigation and regulatory compliance.
Overview
21
21
years of professional experience
Work History
Director, Payment Operations
MUFG Union Bank
07.2021 - 07.2023
- Leader of Wire Transfer Services inclusive of processing, investigations, implementations, business analysts, and trust payment operations
- Identified solutions and led resolution of wire related MRA findings
- Enhanced team collaboration through regular communication, goal setting, and performance evaluations.
- Developed high-performing teams by providing mentorship, guidance, and opportunities for professional growth.
- Identified and led implementation of 21 operational enhancements resulting in operational efficiencies and enhanced client experience
- Proactively identified potential risks and implemented mitigation strategies to minimize negative impacts on projects or business operations.
President
JLH Consulting Inc.
03.2019 - 06.2021
- Company Overview: Private Consulting
- In the time since my last position, I have provided private consulting to First Financial Bank, a financial services provider of ~$7B in assets
- First engagement: Drafted new wire transfer policy for presentment and ultimate adoption by the Board of Directors
- Evaluated the end to end wire process making recommendations for enhancements / process improvements across all facets, 75 in total
- These recommendations will enhance the customer experience, provide for increased operational efficiency, and greatly improve risk mitigation
- The recommendations spanned: system configurations, wire operations process changes, branch / internal department wire initiation, third party providers
- Second engagement (ongoing): Drafted the following bank policies and risk governance for presentment and ultimate adoption by the Board of Directors: ACH, Remote Deposit Capture, Treasury Management Risk Governance
- Evaluated the end to end ACH process system architecture
- Recommendations provided on process and architecture improvements
- Implementation approved and scheduled for 2021
- Led effort to implement an improved process for ACH Third Party Sender evaluation, implementation, and subsequent ongoing reviews
- Led effort to revamp the ACH Annual Originator and Risk review
- Completed full revamp of the wire transfer billing process for both analysis and hard charge scenarios
- This included changes in the wire, core, and analysis applications providing capability to differentiate fees for domestic and international transactions across the consumer and commercial base
- Full re-write of wire transfer procedures for both wire operations and branch/internal initiators
- Developed detailed business continuity procedures for wire transfer
- Private Consulting
Senior Vice President, Treasury Management Operations
BANK OZK
08.2017 - 11.2018
- Company Overview: Bank OZK is a regional bank headquartered in Little Rock, AR with over 250 locations in ten states, ~$22B in assets and a focus in Retail Banking, Commercial Banking and Treasury
- Leader of the treasury management operations staff supporting domestic and international wire transfers, ACH, Positive Pay, Remote Deposit Capture, Sweeps and Analysis
- Responsibilities extended to the related business recovery, regulatory compliance, and risk controls as well as analyst support for the software applications
- Regarded as a highly trusted treasury management and payments adviser within the enterprise
- Implemented straight through processing for inbound wire transfers resulting in a 10% resource re-allocation and enhancing the timing of credit to customer accounts
- Integral decision maker in the selection of new processing applications for wire, ACH, and commercial online banking system
- Attained satisfactory internal and external audit ratings across all services
- Identified the opportunity and led the effort to automate outbound ACH file delivery to the Federal Reserve resulting in reduced risk of manual processing error and untimely delivery
- Initiated review and clean-up of analysis system and processes inclusive of customer pricing resulting in removal of 85k non-analysis accounts and $25k monthly revenue increase
- Automated international USD and foreign currency wire processing in the core wire processing system through use of a new third-party provider resulting in a 10% resource re-allocation
- Self-funded the creation of a separate treasury management customer service and product implementation team through efficiency gains in overall treasury management operations
- Implemented fully functional business recovery location
- Significantly enhanced business recovery processes and associated plans
- Identified the need for and led the implementation of an automated NACHA required ACH returns report ensuring adherence in compliance to NACHA rules
- Bank OZK is a regional bank headquartered in Little Rock, AR with over 250 locations in ten states, ~$22B in assets and a focus in Retail Banking, Commercial Banking and Treasury
Senior Vice President, Enterprise Payment Operations
CAPITAL ONE BANK
07.2011 - 07.2017
- Company Overview: Capital One Financial Corporation is a bank holding company specializing in credit cards, auto loans, and commercial and consumer banking
- It is ranked 10th on the list of the largest banks in the United States by assets and has ~49,000 employees
- Responsible for leading a payment operations staff in support of domestic and international wire transfers in excess of $2.7 Trillion per annum
- Responsibilities extended to the related reconcilement functions and business recovery as well as analyst support for the software applications, systems, and interfaces with respect to business requirements, test scripts, testing, and staff training
- Partnered with the Risk and Compliance areas ensuring appropriate regulatory compliance and effective risk controls for all areas of responsibility
- Functioned as a highly trusted, enterprise wide payments adviser
- Agile Product Manager for the implementation of a payment integration engine for the Enterprise, a multi-year $19M program
- Achieved highest Employee Engagement scores within Commercial Operations for 2013 (88%) and 2014 (91%) having demonstrated double digit improvement for three consecutive years with maintenance of like kind scores for 2015 and 2017
- Improved blended STP rate from 26% to >90% through process improvements and implementation of payment engine
- Implemented staffing model that supported a 30% staff reduction, achieving an additional 50% reduction with full implementation of payment engine
- Moved from Internal Audit rating of Inadequate to Adequate in 18-month timeframe; Adequate rating maintained on a go forward basis (Adequate being the highest attainable rating)
- Principal source of expertise in the design of the enterprise foreign exchange trading infrastructure and accounting structure ensuring seamless trade execution
- Awarded various internal recognitions: Circle of Excellence winner Q2 2014, ACE quarterly and annual award winner 2013, Circle of Excellence nominee Q4 2013
- Capital One Financial Corporation is a bank holding company specializing in credit cards, auto loans, and commercial and consumer banking
- It is ranked 10th on the list of the largest banks in the United States by assets and has ~49,000 employees
Vice President, Global Payments and Commercial Implementations & Billing
FIFTH THIRD BANK
10.2003 - 07.2011
- Company Overview: Fifth Third Bancorp is a bank holding company with Fifth Third Bank being the principal subsidiary
- Providing banking and financial services it is on the list of the largest banks in the United States by assets at ~$142B and has ~18,000 employees
- Managed and led the operations staff responsible for the daily processing of international and domestic funds transfers, ACH, foreign exchange operations and trade services (commercial and standby letters of credit, documentation collections, and acceptances) as well as responsibility for Commercial Implementations & Billing/Analysis
- Responsibilities in all these areas extended to the related reconcilement functions and business recovery as well as analyst support for the software applications, systems, and interfaces with respect to business requirements, test scripts, testing, and staff training
- Partnered with the Risk and Compliance areas ensuring appropriate regulatory compliance and effective risk controls for all areas of responsibility
- Seven consecutive years of 'Satisfactory' ratings on internal and external audits of all areas managed (Satisfactory being the highest attainable rating)
- Attained 4.88 Grand Mean on the Gallup Employee Engagement survey out of a possible 5.0 with maintenance of like kind scores throughout tenure
- Implemented new FX trading application, Wall Street Systems
- Led the conversion from previous ACH processing application to Pep+ from an operational perspective
- Partnered in the implementation of web-based internal funds transfer initiation application
- Resulted in the reduction of 14 funds transfer call operators as well as greatly reduced the risk associated with the previous PIN based initiation
- Expanded use of Business Partner Outsourcing (BPO) in the Implementations space resulting in the reduction of 12 FTE with a related cost reduction of 40% and an increase in quality and timeliness metrics
- Initiated use of BPO for quality assurance review in the Implementations & Billing space resulting in .75% increase in quality metrics
- In partnership with Enterprise Risk, Commercial Credit, and IT, implemented significant change in ACH Risk monitoring over the course of two years, a paradigm shift for this organization
- Fifth Third Bancorp is a bank holding company with Fifth Third Bank being the principal subsidiary
- Providing banking and financial services it is on the list of the largest banks in the United States by assets at ~$142B and has ~18,000 employees
Vice President, International Systems Integration and Support | International Trade Services Group Manager
COMERICA BANK
02.2002 - 09.2003
- Company Overview: Comerica Incorporated is a financial services company now headquartered in Dallas, TX
- With assets of ~$72B it is on the list of largest banks in the United States by assets and has ~8,000 employees
- Leader of the operational staff in six sites inclusive of the Hong Kong subsidiary supporting import, export, standby letters of credit, risk participations, clean and documentary collections
- Also held responsibility for staff supporting the implementation of technology related projects and 'run the engine' support of international software applications and interfaces
- Held dotted line responsibility for the project management, product support, and training groups of the International Trade Services Department
- Managed the completion of a long-stalled project encompassing the implementation of a web-based customer front end application
- Product/service offerings included purchase order processing, standby and trade letters of credit, documentary collections, discrepancy processing, parent/child functionality, transfers, and assignments
- Managed the successful conversion of largest import letter of credit income and volume customer to new web-based front-end application
- Met extensively with customer’s business and technical representatives to define customization requirements, conversion methodology, and timeline
- Initiated legal review of the Hong Kong subsidiary to ascertain specifically what products could be supported within the constraints of Hong Kong banking regulations and legal considerations
- Led to the implementation of several new service/product offerings with an anticipated first year annual revenue stream of $40k
- Designed and tested system changes necessary to allow Hong Kong operations to fully utilize trade application software for the processing of trade related product offerings
- Comerica Incorporated is a financial services company now headquartered in Dallas, TX
- With assets of ~$72B it is on the list of largest banks in the United States by assets and has ~8,000 employees
Education
Business Administration - Accounting, Micro/Macro Economics
University of Cincinnati
Cincinnati, OHSkills
- ACH Payment Flows
- Payment Operations Management
- Agile Product Management
- Process Improvement
- Budgeting
- Product Implementation
- Business Continuity
- Regulatory Compliance
- Compliance Monitoring
- Reporting
- Customer Escalation Management
- Risk Mitigation
- Federal Regulations Knowledge
- System / Application Implementation
- Forecasting
- Systems Oriented Mindset
- Operational Effectiveness
- Team Management / Leadership
- Payments Business Controls
- Wire Transfer Regulations
- Strategic Planning
- Verbal and written communication
- People Management
- Operations Management
Community Service
- Ronald McDonald House – Arranged and led participation in meal provision for at least 6 events annually.
- Making Strides Against Breast Cancer – Team leader for the annual Cincinnati walk-a-thons.
- Project Homes – Assist in the build and install of wheelchair ramps at the homes of individuals in need.
Associations
- The Clearing House - Member of The Clearing House ‘real time payments’ forum for initial concept definition.
- Treasury Strategies – Participant in round tables and periodic webinars related to Treasury Management implementation and customer support.
Timeline
Director, Payment Operations
MUFG Union Bank
07.2021 - 07.2023
President
JLH Consulting Inc.
03.2019 - 06.2021
Senior Vice President, Treasury Management Operations
BANK OZK
08.2017 - 11.2018
Senior Vice President, Enterprise Payment Operations
CAPITAL ONE BANK
07.2011 - 07.2017
Vice President, Global Payments and Commercial Implementations & Billing
FIFTH THIRD BANK
10.2003 - 07.2011
Vice President, International Systems Integration and Support | International Trade Services Group Manager
COMERICA BANK
02.2002 - 09.2003
Business Administration - Accounting, Micro/Macro Economics
University of Cincinnati
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