When was the last time you left tens of millions of dollars on the table? Probably never if you knew you were about to do it and could avoid it. We’ve been hearing from CEOs, Presidents and CFOs that their compliance officers are on top of the soon to be effective Regulation E opt in rules which tells us that these senior executives are not giving these rules the respect and attention they require. Financial institutions come August will begin to lose what some experts say is half their non-interest income because of these rules. Isn’t that dramatic enough to garner the attention of senior executives?

If your customers don’t opt in or consent to your institution’s overdraft program when they make transactions at an ATM or with a debit card, you cannot cover their overdraft and the transaction is denied. That’s the end of your program with that customer—the customer doesn’t have the confidence that he or she has back up and you’ve lost the opportunity to charge a fee! If only it was so simple but it is not. At least 40% of overdraft fees are associated with what’s called the “every day” debit purchase. This is why every customer is important to the success of your opt-in program; you don’t want to make it easy for your customers to just walk away from opting in. And your customers need to understand what they are giving up if they don’t opt in.

The reality is it will take a massive effort bank wide—compliance, IT, operations, marketing, training, branch administration—to develop and implement a customer communication strategy to get everyone to sign up. Is that something your compliance officer is planning to do? Without support and involvement from the senior executives, we think this will become just another compliance event and institutions will lose all the millions the news media are predicting.

We are advising our clients to devote resources across all functional areas in the bank to get the opt in word out to their customers and encourage them to sign up. But you know this well: it has to come from the top to have a sense of urgency. We’re not all Bank of America and can just walk away.