RMA Appoints William F. Githens as President and CEO

After a nationwide search, the board of directors of The Risk Management Association has appointed William F. Githens as president and CEO effective January 26, 2010. Githens is currently director of Member Relations for RMA and has over 35 years of commercial banking experience.

PHILADELPHIA, Jan. 26 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- William F. Githens has been appointed president and CEO of The Risk Management Association (RMA), effective January 26, 2010. The announcement was made by past RMA chair Sonny B. Lyles, executive vice president and chief risk officer, Main Street Bank, Houston, who chaired the committee that conducted the nationwide search.

Githens, 62, joined RMA in 1997 as director of Member Relations. He has been responsible for establishing and organizing the member relations functions to serve RMA's members, including community banks, large banks, global banks, and the chapter network. Githens also directs enterprise risk management and credit risk initiatives and activities for the association.  He is actively involved with the regulatory agencies and interacts frequently with chief risk officers and other risk professionals in the financial services industry.

Prior to joining RMA, Githens was employed for over 25 years in various leadership roles in financial services.  He served as senior vice president of Member Relations for Visa USA, was president and CEO of SynapQuest, Inc., a subsidiary of CoreStates Financial Corporation, and managed various credit and non-credit functions in CoreStates and its predecessor institution, First Pennsylvania Bank.

Githens will be the ninth chief executive of RMA since its founding in 1914.  He succeeds W. Kendall Chalk, retired senior executive vice president and chief credit officer, BB&T Corporation, who has served as interim president and CEO while the search has been underway.  

ABOUT RMA

Founded in 1914, The Risk Management Association is a not-for-profit, member-driven professional association whose sole purpose is to advance the use of sound risk principles in the financial services industry. RMA promotes an enterprise-wide approach to risk management that focuses on credit risk, market risk and operational risk.

Headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, RMA has approximately 3,000 institutional members that include banks of all sizes as well as nonbank financial institutions. They are represented in the Association by 18,000 risk management professionals who are chapter members in financial centers throughout North America, Europe and Asia/Pacific.

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SOURCE RMA - The Risk Management Association