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.