Let's talk about a topic that might not be as flashy as market trends or investment strategies. It's the unsung hero keeping your financial ship afloat: compliance. Think of it as the guardian angel of the financial planning world, ensuring that your hard-earned money is handled with the utmost care.

That's why we wanted to take this opportunity to properly introduce you to our Chief Compliance Officer. Not only does she have a decade of experience in operations but she is also a mother; a surprisingly complimentary role to her career.

Nurturing Compliance: Operations Manager and Motherhood

Checking All of the Boxes

The alarm goes off in the Young household at 5:00 AM. Jaxson, Karly's 2- year old son, sprints to his parents bedroom with his Paw Patrol blanket on and launches himself up into the bed. Everyone is up, and the slow crawl of getting ready for the day begins; checking off all of the boxes until everything is finally back in order:

• Make breakfast
• Walk the 2 dogs
• Rescue the cabinets from being unloaded by a 2-year old
• Cleanup the landmine of toy trucks
• Get ready for work and pack for daycare

Karly, by 7:30 AM, has turned chaos into order and has set off to work after dropping her son off at daycare. 

The Other Family & Financial Compliance

When she arrives at work, her work day begins by logging into RIAb (a regulatory compliance program), where she starts her next checklist. Financial compliance, much like our snapshot of motherly compliance, is used to ensure orderly function to a bigger system. With all of the moving parts of updating documents, going through policies and procedures, and managing the other employees at the office, her juggling act is an art at this point. 

When you speak to her about her role in compliance, she's energized and loves the challenge. In fact, Waterstone just went through a federal audit, and when Karly was prompted to start prepping the documents needed, she was thrilled about it. (Who gets excited about an audit? This girl.) 

Karly even put together a 2 month training program for all of the staff at the office to teach them about necessary compliance habits and regulations to be aware of. In the long run, this makes her job easier. When I asked her about compliance being a challenge at the office, she simply told me, “Being CCO here is easy because everyone is doing the right thing." When your work family behaves, oversight goes much smoother.

The Roots of Success

With her background in fraud detection at Chewy, and her role as Executive Director of Operations at Anticipation Yacht Charters, the process of compliance has become second nature. Analyzing high-dollar purchases by cross-referencing addresses on file with their credit card on file, or renewing coast guard certificates for pop-up inspections absolutely helped pave the way for the mind set of dotting the “i's” and crossing all “t's”. Every detail counts. 

Back to Daycare

At the end of the day after analyzing details, and ensuring that the firm is following protocol and everything is in order, she heads to pick up her son from daycare. Jaxson loves sprinting to the car and having sing alongs in the car on the way home. There is a level of peace at the end of the day that makes the whole process worth it. It takes a keen eye for detail, the ability to juggle multiple tasks, and an authentic intention to do good in the world to be an excellent compliance officer (and mother). 

January will mark the first full year of working with us at Waterstone Financial. When I asked her if she had any last thoughts on the topic, she just wanted to say that, “I love working here- it really feels like a family.” 

We're thrilled to have you on our team Karly!