“If you looked up boring in the dictionary, you’d find my picture,” Duane Bavlnka quips, alluding to a comment made by a former North Shore Bank employee.

Then Duane — who celebrates 40 years as a bank staffer this summer, and the last 13 as our VP of compliance — chuckles. “But he’s gone, and I’m still here.”

Compliance — ensuring that the bank conforms with myriad state and federal banking regulations — is not the most exciting topic, but it’s an essential part of every transaction.

To keep abreast of the constant stream of compliance requirements, Duane scours the Internet daily. When he receives email alerts, he reads, interprets, and shares updates with those throughout our system who need the new information to ensure that we operate within the guidelines.

Notifying customers yearly of the bank’s privacy policy is a simple compliance measure. Lending is a different matter.

“There has been more lending reform in the last five years than in the last 20 years combined, and the pressure to be in compliance has increased exponentially. Any error in the lending process could affect an individual customer or an entire group of people,” Duane says. Needless to say, such errors could also be highly problematic for the bank.

Banking not intended career choice
Duane didn’t graduate from college with an eye on banking. He would have liked becoming a child psychologist, possibly working in a school setting.

But when he earned his bachelor’s degree in psychology from Carroll College in Waukesha, his wife-to-be, Linda, was a year behind him. “I wanted to stick around and wait for her. Plus, I didn’t have the money to go on,” he says. “I did factory work until she got her business degree.”

When Linda graduated and took a job at North Shore Bank, she helped Duane find a position here as well. “I started working part time as a general gofer, processing mail, making interoffice deliveries, and ordering supplies,” he says.

He eventually became a teller, later moving up to assistant branch manager, branch manager, security officer, operations manager, mortgage operations manager, and in 2002, compliance officer.

His increasing responsibilities kept him on the move: Shorewood, Southwest, Waukesha, Wauwatosa, Corporate in Brookfield. He now fulfills his corporate responsibilities from our Sturgeon Bay office.

North Shore Bank an ‘ideal workplace’
Duane considers North Shore Bank an ideal workplace. “You don’t find negative people or the infighting and backstabbing you hear about in other places,” he says.

“Not only does North Shore have great staff members, people really know their jobs and are dedicated,” he adds. “There is cooperation and positive interaction. People here like to smile!”

Duane and Linda have two daughters, Erica and Dana. Both worked at NSB summers while they were in college.

Since at 40 years in, Duane might be training the next compliance officer down the road a bit, he describes an ideal candidate:

• Someone who is intimately familiar with banking and extremely detail-oriented, but not to the extent of getting bogged down
• Someone who can discern which of the multitude of regulations, both existing and new, are relevant to North Shore Bank’s operations, balancing regulations, and reality
• Someone who can communicate to staff in plain language how to incorporate the changes, all the while treating customers as fairly as possible

For now, Duane is content to continue helping ensure that all the i’s are dotted and the t’s are crossed when it comes to compliance.

Away from the office, he enjoys making wine and visiting brewpubs with Linda. “We’ve been known to drive three hours each way just to have lunch,” he says.