Job Aid: Conducting Your First Exam in SES

This job aid serves as a guide for new Examiner in Charge (EIC) to conduct their first exam in the State Examination System (SES). It highlights the basic workflow of an exam in SES and points out important information along the way.

Purpose

Since the workflow in SES is not specific to any industry or business type, this job aid is relevant for any exam conducted in SES. This job aid is specific to the Examination Supervisory Activity type and should not be used to support an Investigation.

Typical exam workflow phases

Phase 1: Preparation, Communication, and Setup
Phase 2: Information Requests (IRs)
Phase 3: Planning and Receiving IR Responses
Phase 4: Conducting the Examination and Preparing the Report of Examination (ROE)
Phase 5: ROE Package Assembly and Transmission to Company
Phase 6: Company Responses and Exam Close Out

Fastpath: View the SES Milestones Prezi for a handy job-aid.

Basic Flow for Conducting an Exam in SES

Preparation, Communication, and Setup

These steps may be completed at any time. Most of the steps in this phase can be completed by any agency user, not just the EIC. Your agency may limit the actions in this section to certain users by agency policy, however.

Information Requests

This phase is where the information requests list will be created, refined, and sent to the company. This is where the company’s SA contact will receive their first notification of this exam through SES.

Planning and Receiving IR Responses

This is a good time to complete the Examination Planning, if your agency uses that feature. The exam plan can be used to assign exam Participants Area for Review (AFR) and prioritize the AFRs you chose to include. You can also use the exam plan to communicate risks that you want the exam team to focus on as they complete their AFRs.

As you are defining the plan, the company will begin responding to your information requests. You can monitor the IR completion process by viewing the Information Request tab at any time.

If your exam is a mortgage, consumer finance, or other lending industry exam, you may wish to use the Loan Requests tab to make loan requests.

Note: The New Hampshire release tutorial demonstrates how to use the loan request functionality.

Conducting the Exam and Preparing the Report of Exam

This phase is where most of the work you typically consider “examination work” will take place. Before you can begin working procedures in SES, you must move the exam to the In-Flight Milestone. Choose the Move to In-Flight button from the exam summary page.

Flowchart: Conducting Exam and Preparing Responses

ROE Package Assembly and Transmission to Company

In this phase, the EIC assigns a person to be the Package Assembler, a role that can be handled by any Staff Director or User, staff user, or the EIC.

Company Response and Exam Close Out

While awaiting a company’s response to the ROE (if permitted), the EIC can move forward and complete the exam close-out information. If Matters Requiring Attention (MRA) were assigned to the company, the exam record can be closed before MRA responses are received.

Additional Resources

This job aid is not intended to explain every action available in SES. There are many more features and options available to streamline and improve the exam experience for your exam team and companies. For more information about these features or to view recent event recordings where these features were demonstrated, check out the resources at https://portal.stateexaminationsystem.org

Feedback suggestions may be sent to SESfeedback@csbs.org

For more information or support, contact the Regulatory Users Group (RUG) of the NMLS Call Center at the phone number or email provided on our secure portal. Secure Portal (requires agency login).