Dive Brief:
- Comerica’s Chief Risk Officer Brian Goldman is leaving the bank “to pursue another opportunity, effective May 23,” the Dallas-based lender said in a securities filing Wednesday.
- Goldman, also a senior executive vice president at the bank, joined Comerica in December 2023.
- While Comerica searches for a new chief risk officer, Melinda Chausse, the bank’s chief credit officer, will take on risk chief duties on an interim basis, the bank said in the filing.
Dive Insight:
Goldman informed the bank of his decision, which “was not the result of any disagreement with Comerica or Comerica’s Board of Directors,” on May 8, the filing said. His compensation last year totaled $3.8 million, according to the bank’s latest proxy filing; he received a $1.2 million signing bonus when hired.
Before Comerica, Goldman spent about 3.5 years in operational risk roles at Citi, and, before that, more than 20 years at Goldman Sachs, where he held risk-related roles for about a decade, according to his LinkedIn profile. Goldman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
In his short time at Comerica, Goldman enhanced the company’s risk management model and practices, worked to mature its capabilities and upskill employees and improved risk reporting, the bank said in the proxy filing.
In April 2024, after the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency discovered unsafe or unsound practices related to risk governance framework and internal controls, the regulator hit Comerica Bank & Trust – a niche national bank separate from Comerica Bank – with an enforcement action. The subsidiary was ordered to establish a compliance committee as well as adequate board oversight and a corporate governance program.
That order appeared to be the culmination of an issue within the bank’s trust unit related to a wealth management technology platform upgrade, analysts said. In December 2023, The Wall Street Journal reported that the OCC was scrutinizing a wealth management platform change Comerica made in May 2023, after the technology update resulted in widespread transaction errors and the bank overdrawing its own accounts by millions of dollars.
The OCC also told the bank to adopt a program to assess and manage third-party relationship risks, enhance its internal audit program and bolster internal controls. The bank also agreed to establish a program designed to mitigate risks related to information technology assets.
Also last year, Comerica informed investors it would no longer serve as the Treasury Department’s bank partner for its Direct Express prepaid card program, a role it had held since 2008. Comerica found itself in hot water after it allowed a third-party vendor, i2c, to field fraud disputes and handle cardholder data from an office in Pakistan, when the Treasury Department required all Direct Express services be provided in the U.S. or its territories, American Banker reported.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, under the Biden-era leadership of Rohit Chopra, began investigating Comerica’s handling of the Direct Express program, which prompted the bank to file a lawsuit against the consumer watchdog calling the probe “aggressive and overreaching.”
The CFPB, a month later, filed a lawsuit against the bank stemming from that investigation, charging the bank with “systematically failing” 3.4 million federal benefits recipients who held Direct Express prepaid cards with intentionally poor customer service and illegally harvested junk fees.
Last month, the bureau – under Trump administration leadership – dropped the case against the bank, although without prejudice, meaning the CFPB could refile the lawsuit. The CFPB had requested more time in the case, which the bank pushed back on; a judge denied the bureau’s request.
