Director of Regulatory Controls
Alli Yttreness took a circuitous route back to banking after starting out as a teller while attending the University of Minnesota. Yttreness joined the $675 billion-asset U.S. Bank 11 years ago from the American Academy of Neurology, where she had served in the Office of the General Counsel.
"I knew that I wanted to be in banking law, but it was really about finding where my passion was," Yttreness said
While studying at the University of St. Thomas School of Law, Yttreness had a law professor who put her in touch with a friend who worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. She vividly remembers a discussion about the role of compliance and risk, which eventually led her back on the path to banking.
"We had such an insightful conversation that it really informed the rest of my career," she said. "The nontraditional legal route is not talked about a lot in law school."
Yttreness graduated from law school and then got a Masters of Law, or L.L.M., also from St. Thomas School of Law. In 10 years, she has assumed six roles at U.S. Bank, each with increased responsibilities. She started in domestic anti-money laundering oversight and moved up quickly to a senior vice president and senior director of financial crimes, fraud and compliance.
Last year, Ytreness was named director of regulatory controls for corporate and commercial banking, one of U.S. Bank's four business lines. The job involves oversight of regulatory compliance risk programs dealing primarily with financial crimes that hit commercial customers with revenue of $25 million or more. In the new role, she helped streamline a quality-control process for loan applications. She also created a customer-facing digital platform for corporate customers, so they could enter information themselves and reduce manual processes to comply with so-called "Know Your Customer," rules.
"Financial crimes is an interesting and ever-changing environment," she said. "I like the complexity of banking and of the regulatory requirements that surround banking and the ability to do so many different things."
Yttreness also handles compliance risk programs dealing with environment social responsibility policy and climate programs. In the past year, she also helped integrate commercial customers from U.S. Bank's purchase of MUFG Union Bank, which closed last year.
Staying on top of the changing environment for financial crimes and fraud takes up most of Yttreness's time, but she also deals with compliance issues related to two specific laws —the Fair Credit Reporting Act and Equal Credit Opportunity Act—that are tied to lending risks. One area getting increased attention is when a company's business emails are compromised and customers defrauded.
"There is a misconception that you can easily identify a fraudster," Yttreness said. "They are very professional and very good at what they do. We are really big on advocacy and client education to help customers understand red flags to look for and what they should be paying attention to."
