Senior Banking & Compliance Executive | Enterprise CMS Transformation | Regulatory Governance Leadership

Alison Stokes,

CRCM

Enterprise Compliance Management Systems (CMS) Regulatory Examinations & Remediation BSA/AML, OFAC & FinCEN Implementation Fair Lending, CRA & Consumer Lending Compliance Executive & Board Governance Reporting Fintech & Sponsor Bank Oversight

Alison Stokes is a senior banking and compliance executive with more than 20 years of leadership across Bank of America, Washington Mutual, JPMorgan Chase, U.S. Bank, and Experian. Her career spans retail banking, consumer lending, enterprise compliance, regulatory governance, examinations, remediation, fintech oversight, and Compliance Management System transformation.

Her experience spans first-line and second-line compliance leadership: implementing BSA/AML, OFAC, and FinCEN requirements within consumer lending operations, directing fair lending and consumer protection programs, and serving as a senior compliance liaison through CFPB, OCC, FDIC, and Federal Reserve examination engagements. She has led teams of 20+ compliance professionals and built infrastructure, including a SAFE Act program and a proprietary governance matrix, that strengthened governance and decision-making across the institutions she served.

Today, Alison continues to apply this experience through executive advisory, governance, and select Fractional Chief Compliance Officer engagements.

CRCM Certified First & Second-Line Leadership CFPB · OCC · FDIC · FRB 20+ Years Enterprise Compliance Leadership
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Alison Stokes, CRCM

Who I Am

A career built across the institutions that define banking regulation.

Unlike many compliance executives whose careers began inside compliance departments, my experience spans retail banking, lending, operations, consumer lending, and enterprise compliance leadership. I'm Alison Stokes, CRCM, a senior compliance executive with more than 20 years of experience across Bank of America, Washington Mutual, JPMorgan Chase, U.S. Bank, and Experian.

My career began in retail banking, not in compliance and not in mortgage operations. At Bank of America, I managed retail banking operations, including branch leadership, sales, deposit products, customer relationship management, community engagement, and business banking activities. That foundation in how a bank actually serves customers and sells products shaped how I would later approach compliance: as a discipline that has to work inside a real business, not alongside it.

From retail banking, I moved into residential lending leadership at TREO Funding and loan fulfillment management at Washington Mutual Bank, building hands-on experience across origination, underwriting, funding, and servicing. That operational grounding became the foundation for everything that followed: retail banking, into residential lending, into loan fulfillment and operations, into consumer lending compliance, into enterprise compliance leadership. I understand both how a control works on the ground and how it needs to look to a regulator, because I've sat on both sides of that line.

40+
Regulatory, Audit & Examination Engagements Supported and Managed
20+
Compliance Professionals Led
5
Major Financial Institutions
20+
Years Building Enterprise Compliance Leadership

Second-Line Compliance

JPMorgan Chase

At JPMorgan Chase, I moved into compliance as a Senior Compliance Officer, providing second-line oversight and advisory support for residential lending and credit card businesses. This is where I built my grounding in fair lending, ECOA, CRA, and consumer protection programs as part of a broader compliance practice, conducting risk assessments and control reviews while partnering with Product, Legal, and Marketing teams to design controls that could hold up before a problem ever reached a regulator.

Nearly 14 Years of First-Line Leadership

U.S. Bank (formerly MUFG Union Bank)

For almost 14 years, I served as the first-line compliance partner for mortgage lending, credit cards, unsecured consumer lending, and small business lending at U.S. Bank. I led implementation of BSA/AML, OFAC, and FinCEN requirements across multiple lending products, working in close partnership with the BSA/AML team to support identification, escalation, documentation, and referral of potentially suspicious activity.

I served as a key compliance partner through CFPB, OCC, FDIC, and Federal Reserve examination engagements, managing examiner relationships directly. I built the SAFE Act program from the ground up, including NMLS registration, training, certification, and ongoing governance, a complete program build that established durable governance infrastructure. I led teams of 20+ compliance professionals and developed a proprietary Compliance Officer Signing Matrix that strengthened governance and decision-making enterprise-wide. I was honored with the Culture of Excellence Award for building the compliance controls behind a multimillion-dollar loan origination platform launch.

Enterprise Compliance at Scale

Experian

I was recruited to Experian specifically to mature the North America Compliance Management System, in connection with a structured audit program. I directed compliance risk assessments, monitoring and testing, regulatory examination readiness, complaint governance, reporting, training, and policy governance. I led governance and oversight for more than 20 partner programs, including fintech, sponsor-bank, and white-label relationships. I led teams of compliance professionals across testing, examinations, reporting, issue remediation, and compliance operations while remediating inherited regulatory findings and building executive reporting dashboards in Power BI and Looker.

Today, Alison continues to apply this experience through executive advisory, governance, and select Fractional Chief Compliance Officer engagements. It is a continuation of the same work she has done for two decades, not a departure from it.

Executive Accomplishments

A career measured in transformation, not tenure.

Built a career spanning retail banking, residential lending, loan fulfillment, consumer lending compliance, enterprise governance, and compliance transformation leadership.
Built the SAFE Act program from the ground up at U.S. Bank, including NMLS registration, training, certification, and ongoing governance, a complete program build that established durable governance infrastructure.
Recruited to Experian specifically to mature the North America Compliance Management System under a structured audit program, directing risk assessments, testing, examination readiness, and reporting across the function.
Served as a senior compliance liaison through CFPB, OCC, FDIC, and Federal Reserve examination engagements, building the kind of examiner credibility that protects an institution's standing.
Led governance and oversight for more than 20 fintech, sponsor-bank, and white-label partner programs, well ahead of when most institutions began building this oversight model.
Developed a proprietary Compliance Officer Signing Matrix at U.S. Bank that strengthened enterprise-wide governance and decision-making.
Received the Culture of Excellence Award for the compliance controls built behind a multimillion-dollar loan origination platform launch.
Led teams of 20+ compliance professionals across first-line and second-line functions.

What I've Built

Areas of deep expertise

Eight functional domains built across Bank of America, Washington Mutual, JPMorgan Chase, U.S. Bank, and Experian, each requiring executive-level compliance leadership under sustained regulatory scrutiny.

🏛️

Compliance Management Systems (CMS)

Built and matured CMS infrastructure at three institutions, spanning risk assessments, testing, policy governance, and executive reporting.

🔍

Regulatory Examinations & Remediation

Served as senior compliance liaison through CFPB, OCC, FDIC, and Federal Reserve examinations, closing inherited findings and rebuilding examiner confidence.

🔗

BSA/AML, OFAC & FinCEN Implementation

Directed implementation of BSA/AML, OFAC, and FinCEN requirements across consumer lending operations in partnership with financial crimes teams.

⚖️

Consumer Lending & Fair Lending Compliance

Led fair lending and consumer protection programs across mortgage, credit card, and small business lending, spanning ECOA, Regulation B, HMDA, and CRA.

📋

Regulatory Change Management

Translated new and amended regulations into updated policy, procedure, and training before deadlines across multiple institutions.

🤝

Fintech & Sponsor Bank Oversight

Directed governance for more than 20 fintech, sponsor-bank, and white-label partner programs.

📊

Executive & Board Reporting

Built governance dashboards and KPI/KRI frameworks that gave boards and leadership real visibility into compliance risk.

👥

Enterprise Team Leadership

Led and developed compliance teams of 20+ professionals across first-line and second-line functions.

Compliance Leadership Discipline

Marketing as a compliance frontier.

Marketing is often where business strategy, customer expectations, product risk, and regulatory exposure meet. Alison's experience includes building governance routines for customer-facing communications, campaign review, disclosure alignment, high-risk terms, digital content, and approval workflows across regulated financial services environments.

Her approach is practical: help teams move faster without weakening controls. That means clear standards, documented decisions, consistent review paths, and stronger partnership between Marketing, Product, Legal, Compliance, and Operations.

The result is a communications environment that supports growth, protects consumers, and holds up when regulators ask how a campaign got approved.

Connect
Campaign & Content Review
Structured review of customer-facing campaigns, digital content, social media, email, and advertising for regulatory compliance, disclosure accuracy, and UDAAP risk.
Disclosures & High-Risk Terms
Governance frameworks for required disclosures, high-risk language, product messaging, rate and fee representations, and comparative claims.
Approval Workflows & Decision Records
Documented review and approval paths that create defensible records, accountability trails, and exam-ready evidence for regulators and auditors.
Cross-Functional Governance Alignment
Practical coordination between Marketing, Product, Legal, Compliance, and Operations; reducing friction, accelerating review, and maintaining consistent standards.
UDAAP & Consumer Protection Controls
Integrating consumer protection standards into communications governance, including UDAAP risk identification, reputational risk review, and mitigation documentation.

Compliance Depth

Fair Lending, Consumer Protection & Customer Access

Fair lending is not limited to underwriting. It shows up across the full customer journey, including marketing, product design, pricing, disclosures, servicing, complaints, monitoring, and remediation.

Alison brings deep experience helping organizations identify and manage fair lending and consumer protection risk across banking, consumer lending, fintech, credit reporting, and digital financial services environments.

Her approach connects regulatory expectations to practical operating routines: risk assessments, control design, complaint analytics, monitoring, testing, governance reporting, and exam-ready documentation.

Regulatory Framework
ECOA · Reg B · FHA · HMDA · FCRA · UDAAP · CRA · Disparate Impact Standards
Governance Disciplines
Risk assessments · Control design · Complaint analytics · Marketing review · Disparate impact monitoring · HMDA integrity · Regulator-facing readiness
Environments
Large bank mortgage · Consumer lending · Credit cards · Small business · Fintech · Credit reporting · BaaS · Digital financial services

Fair Lending Governance Across the Customer Journey

1
Market & Offer
Advertising, targeting, product eligibility, and access governance
2
Disclose & Communicate
Disclosures, terms, high-risk language, and communications review
3
Decision & Price
Underwriting, pricing, denials, exceptions, and disparate impact monitoring
4
Service & Support
Servicing consistency, complaint governance, and customer treatment controls
5
Monitor & Test
Ongoing monitoring, periodic testing, HMDA review, and compliance assurance
6
Report & Remediate
Executive reporting, governance escalation, MRA responses, and remediation tracking

Marketing, customer communications, fair lending, UDAAP, product governance, and compliance controls are connected disciplines within a mature compliance operating model. A campaign that misrepresents terms creates fair lending risk. A disclosure that obscures costs creates UDAAP exposure. Alison's governance approach treats these as a unified operating challenge, not separate compliance boxes.

Executive Career

Five institutions. One consistent standard.

A career built across Bank of America, Washington Mutual, JPMorgan Chase, U.S. Bank, and Experian, institutions spanning retail banking, consumer lending, and enterprise data analytics, united by the same discipline: building compliance infrastructure that holds up under real scrutiny.

Director, Compliance Operations, North America
Experian · Remote

Recruited to build and mature North American Compliance Operations amid heightened audit scrutiny, inherited control fragmentation, and growing executive demand for scalable compliance infrastructure, with executive oversight spanning compliance risk assessments, monitoring and testing, regulatory examinations, complaints governance, reporting, training, policy management, issue remediation, and compliance technology modernization across more than 20 partner programs.

Served as second-line owner for FCRA and consumer data protection compliance, partnering extensively with Product, Legal, Analytics, and business leaders to translate regulatory expectations into scalable controls across data-enabled financial services.

Led Project Odyssey, a multi-workstream compliance modernization initiative designed to remediate inherited governance gaps, rebuild testing discipline, modernize Archer workflow execution, elevate executive reporting, strengthen issue accountability, and establish an AI-enabled future-state operating framework for North American Compliance Assurance.

Senior Vice President, Compliance Manager
U.S. Bank (formerly MUFG Union Bank) · San Diego, CA

Served as the first-line compliance partner across mortgage, credit card, unsecured consumer, and small business lending over nearly 14 years, directing implementation of BSA/AML, OFAC, and FinCEN requirements and partnering closely with the BSA/AML team on suspicious activity identification, escalation, documentation, and referral.

Directed Risk and Control Self-Assessments, enterprise mitigation planning, control design, and executive governance reporting across mortgage, credit card, consumer loan, and small business lending channels.

Built the SAFE Act program from the ground up and served as a key compliance partner during CFPB, OCC, FDIC, FRB, and Internal Audit reviews, translating regulatory expectations into practical, scalable operational controls.

AVP, Senior Compliance Officer
JPMorgan Chase · San Diego, CA

Second-line compliance partner for residential lending and credit card business lines. Fair lending oversight, control design, CRA program governance, and regulatory advisory across consumer products. Foundational grounding in consumer banking regulation and enterprise compliance methodology.

Retail Banking & Operational Foundation
Bank of America · Washington Mutual Bank · TREO Funding

Career began in retail banking at Bank of America, managing branch operations, sales leadership, deposit products, customer relationship management, and business banking activities. Progressed into residential lending leadership at TREO Funding and loan fulfillment management at Washington Mutual Bank, building hands-on experience across origination, underwriting, funding, and servicing that became the operational foundation for every compliance leadership role that followed.

Connect

Signature Work

Enterprise transformations

Three representative engagements where compliance infrastructure, governance discipline, and regulatory readiness required material rebuilding.

Experian

Project Odyssey & North America Compliance Operations Maturity

Designed the future-state compliance operations model across testing governance, regulatory exam management, complaints oversight, reporting, Archer workflow integration, issue remediation, staffing, and AI-enabled modernization under supervisory pressure.

U.S. Bank

BSA/AML, OFAC & FinCEN Implementation

Directed implementation of BSA/AML, OFAC, and FinCEN requirements across mortgage, credit card, and consumer lending operations, building the SAFE Act program from the ground up and partnering closely with the BSA/AML team on suspicious activity identification, escalation, and referral over a nearly 14-year engagement.

U.S. Bank

Fair Lending Program Stabilization

Strengthened first-line consumer lending compliance governance across mortgage and retail portfolios through disparate impact monitoring, HMDA integrity, ECOA/Reg B controls, complaint analytics, and regulator-facing readiness.

Published Work

Insights & thought leadership

Banking Compliance · AI & Fair Lending

Regulatory Quiet Is Not Regulatory Safety: What the CFPB's Fair Lending Shift Means for Banks and Fintechs Using AI

The CFPB's recent amendments to Regulation B narrowed disparate-impact enforcement. For institutions accelerating AI adoption, the governance burden may actually become heavier, not lighter.

By Alison Stokes, CRCM · May 2026Read →
Banking Compliance · AI Governance

Artificial Intelligence and Fair Lending: Innovation, Opportunity, and the New Compliance Frontier

AI does not remove fair lending risk. It can magnify it, accelerate it, and bury it inside a model where management may not see the problem until someone else does.

By Alison Stokes, CRCM · March 2026Read →
Banking Compliance · California Regulatory Landscape

What California Banks Should Be Watching Now: Five Compliance Areas Already Taking Shape

California expectations often form before formal rules are finalized. This article covers fee governance, DFPI oversight, digital assets, AI governance, and community investment.

By Alison Stokes, CRCM · April 2026Read →
Banking Compliance · SBA Lending

SBA Lending in a Changing Risk Environment: What Compliance Officers Should Be Watching Now

Banks navigating SBA lending today face faster origination expectations, more sophisticated fraud schemes, and heightened documentation standards.

By Alison Stokes, CRCM · February 2026Read →
More insights in progress — covering marketing compliance governance, customer communications, and consumer protection across regulated financial services environments.
Get in Touch →

Executive Validation

Third-party confirmation of what the record shows

From senior leaders who observed the work directly.

OCC Fair Lending Examination Outcome

The OCC stated that we did not treat Hispanics differently and met FHA requirements. Our processes are consistent and they did not see variances in our processing. Thank you for all of your efforts and dedication, as well as your amazing partnership.

DC
Diana C.
Regulatory Business Control Group Manager
Regulatory Rigor & Operational Leadership

Your thorough approach, grounded in actual regulatory citations, is a model for how to deal with many such issues. This is the sort of work that elevates the company and allows all parties to focus on real risks rather than creating self-inflicted spirals.

MH
Michael H.
Head of Retail Lending Operations
First-Line Analytical Independence & Compliance Depth

In my 25+ years of working with Compliance professionals, Alison stands above them all. She does not lean on the second-line compliance team to do her job. Instead, she conducts her own analysis of each regulatory question, drafts a summary, and provides it to second-line when their concurrence is needed. Anyone who hires her will be extremely grateful they did.

HB
Heather Brieske, CRCM
VP, Sr. Risk & Compliance Manager

Beyond the Brief

The full picture of who I am

01

Executive Mentor

For 20+ years I have mentored small business owners and emerging professionals through MicroMentor and the African American Board Leadership Institute. Giving back is not separate from my professional identity; it is part of it.

02

Entrepreneur & AI Builder

I am developing two consumer-facing web applications and applying AI tools practically across compliance automation, reporting, and business operations. Building products has sharpened my understanding of what it takes to bring ideas to market responsibly.

03

Real Estate Investor

I actively invest in real estate, which reinforces the same discipline that defines my compliance work: understanding risk, reading regulatory signals, and making decisions with long-term consequence in mind.

Advisory & Fractional CCO Engagements

An extension of this experience.

Alison Stokes brings more than 20 years of executive compliance leadership to select advisory and Fractional Chief Compliance Officer engagements. This work is a direct extension of the career outlined above, applied to organizations seeking that same level of judgment.

Compliance Management System (CMS) Design and Maturity

For organizations building or strengthening their compliance infrastructure: risk assessments, monitoring and testing, policy governance, and complaint management, built on experience maturing CMS functions at scale.

Regulatory Examination Readiness and Remediation

For organizations preparing for an examination or closing findings from one already completed: examination preparation, corrective action planning, and regulator-facing governance reporting, informed by direct experience as a senior compliance liaison through CFPB, OCC, FDIC, and Federal Reserve engagements.

BSA/AML, Fair Lending, and Consumer Compliance Governance

For organizations strengthening financial crimes governance or consumer lending compliance: BSA/AML, OFAC, and FinCEN governance support, fair lending and CRA program evaluation, and regulatory change management, built on direct implementation experience within large-scale consumer lending operations.

Fractional Chief Compliance Officer Engagements

For organizations that need executive-level compliance judgment without a full-time hire: ongoing advisory, board and committee reporting, and regulatory liaison support, an extension of the same executive leadership demonstrated throughout Alison's career.

If your organization needs this level of experience, whether through a single engagement or an ongoing advisory relationship, I'd welcome the conversation.
Connect →

Connect

Let's start a conversation

Alison welcomes conversations regarding executive leadership opportunities, board and advisory roles, speaking engagements, industry collaboration, and select consulting engagements.

✉stokes.alison@gmail.com ☎(619) 807-0478 inlinkedin.com/in/alison-stokes-crcm