Karen Schnell (Communications Director) is a Senior Director in FTI Consulting’s Financial Services practice and is based in Washington, DC. She has more than 25 years of experience advising US and foreign clients on risk management, compliance, operations, and governance. Her skills and expertise range from high-level strategic planning to tactical, process workflow development and improvement. She is skilled in deep-dive reviews for transaction lookbacks associated with potential financial crimes, as well as analyzing and improving structural gaps such as governance weaknesses or information system vulnerabilities.

As a risk management specialist, Ms. Schnell has evaluated the internal controls of financial institutions, ranging in size from large, multinational banks to small, domestic credit unions, and she has developed programs to strengthen their controls and processes. She has conducted risk reviews of IT programs and developed recommendations to address identified weaknesses. For example, she conducted the risk analysis for a payments process that transmits $89 billion per day and identified weaknesses that could have resulted in overspending by $3 million per annum. For a client that wanted to introduce a new payments option, Ms. Schnell conducted a survey of global affiliates to assess their security awareness and identify security concerns and weaknesses associated with instituting the new product; she then made recommendations to ensure a smooth product rollout. Recently she conducted an AML transaction lookback and a sanctions review for an international banking entity to address regulatory concerns.