Fraud Committee
Heidi Sexton is Sound Community Bank's chief fraud fighter. Sexton, the bank's executive vice president and chief operating officer, leads its two-year-old fraud committee.
The committee's work is paying dividends: it lowered the bank's fraud-related expenses by more than 33%—from $189,000 in 2024 to about $126,000 in 2025. The $1 billion community bank is on track this year to further reduce those expenses by nearly 60% compared with last year, to about $51,000. In addition, the bank said its anti-fraud initiative prevented more than $700,000 in fraud in 2025.
The fraud committee brings together employees from the retail, operations, compliance, anti-money laundering and technology departments. Each month, the committee reviews fraud activity and trends, discusses anti-fraud strategies, monitors fraud losses, evaluates fraud detection systems and considers other fraud-related matters.