FirstBank Case Study | ActiveComply

From Manual Audits to Automated Confidence: How FirstBank Modernized Loan Officer Social Media Compliance with ActiveComply

Laura Byrum, VP, Director of Mortgage Marketing at FirstBank, used to lead her team through a manual, monthly audit of loan officer social media, a task that ate up valuable time without ever feeling finished. Endless Google searches, tedious record keeping, and unresponsive loan officers made the end-of-month compliance crush something no one looked forward to. After seeing ActiveComply presented at a Mortgage Collaborative event, Laura and her team found a way to simplify that process.

Here’s how FirstBank automated its monthly loan officer social media audit with ActiveComply^® Social.

The Challenge

As loan officer engagement with social media grew, FirstBank’s compliance team faced four connected problems:

1. Manual audits: Monthly reviews of loan officer social media relied on manual Google searches and tedious record keeping.
2. Rising loan officer activity: Increased social media use during the housing boom made manual monitoring harder to sustain.
3. Balancing production and compliance: Marketing wanted to encourage loan officer engagement, while compliance needed assurance that activity stayed within bounds.
4. Depository-level scrutiny: As a depository, FirstBank faces closer regulatory attention than many lender organizations, raising the bar for audit readiness.

“From a marketing standpoint, I want to encourage that, but the compliance side of me and our compliance team want to make sure that everyone is doing what they’re supposed to be doing,” Byrum says.

The Solution

ActiveComply^® Social gave FirstBank a way to bridge production and compliance, automatically discovering social media tied to the institution, identifying costly compliance issues, and archiving content for record retention, all at once.

“We had a good handle on it, but it is so much easier with ActiveComply. We were spending so much time and energy doing things that we didn’t know we didn’t have to be doing because there is a service out there like ActiveComply,” Byrum says.

AI-powered discovery and screening

Using AI and OCR (optical character recognition) technology, ActiveComply automatically searches for instances of lender branding, trade names, and licensing across websites and social media platforms. The system continuously scans profiles for licensing and fair lending requirements while evaluating post content for RESPA concerns, UDAAP issues, and other regulatory violations.

Staying ahead of current events

ActiveComply’s content alert feature is built on predefined content policies developed with industry experts and fully customizable to each lender’s needs. When the conflict between Russia and Ukraine began in 2022, FirstBank was offered the option to opt in to new suggested keywords flagging employees who might take a polarizing public stance.

“I didn’t even think about monitoring something like that until it was suggested by the ActiveComply team, and it’s good to keep a pulse on those things,” Byrum says.

Inappropriate and Politics folders give the team a clear view of what employees are posting publicly and how it aligns with company values.

Exam-ready reporting

Regulators expect a fast response to examination requests, and the CFPB requires lenders to retain advertisements for at least two years, with some states requiring longer. ActiveComply lets FirstBank search archived content directly or hand exam requests to the ActiveComply team for a personalized report at no additional charge.

“It’s nice to have everything in one platform to get a global view of what we’re doing even outside of an audit, and it’s great for our compliance team to have everything in one spot for seamless review,” Byrum says.

The Results

Technology alone only solves part of the problem. For Byrum, having a partner who understands the mortgage and banking business mattered just as much as the platform itself.

“I know, personally, when I am looking at partners, I want to feel like they are rooting for us and that they’re on our team. Having partners that are mortgage or bank-centric, that understand our business, that’s hugely important in my book,” Byrum says.

Monthly newsletters and plain-language regulatory resources help every member of FirstBank’s team, regardless of compliance background, see social media the way a regulator does, one less thing on the marketing and compliance teams’ plate.