Arvest Bank of Bentonville in Arkansas replaced Cara James with Renee Huffaker (pictured) as its chief compliance officer on 1st January. She has more than 25 years of banking and regulatory experience.

Arvest Bank's private banking arm prides itself on servicing wealthy medical professionals. Ms Huffaker is now responsible for Arvest’s enterprise-wide compliance and oversees compliance managers and teams.

Between 2014 and this month, she was a senior compliance officer at Arvest and was responsible for enterprise-wide compliance activities, including consumer, mortgage, money-laundering control, fiduciary and wealth compliance. For less than a year in 2013 she was a Bank Secrecy Act/Anti-Money-Laundering Officer at BOK Financial, the largest bank in Oklahoma. Between 2006 and 2012 she was also at BOK and was responsible for its enterprise-wide BSA/AML compliance function, including USA PATRIOT Act and OFAC compliance functions, for BOK Financial Corporation and its bank and non-bank affiliates. Before that, she was a senior examiner at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.

Ms Huffaker, who is based in Tulsa, is both a Certified Public Accountant and Certified Regulatory Compliance Manager. She earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Southern Nazarene University and lives in Bixby in Oklahoma.

Cara James, whom Ms Huffaker has replaced, was promoted to the post of Chief Risk Officer, also on 1st January. Before she became chief compliance officer at Arvest, which she joined in 2013, she did the same job at two other financial institutions. Ms James has specialised in compliance management since 1992, working in consumer protection regulation and also performing duties related to the Community Reinvestment Act and the Bank Secrecy Act. Before her compliance career began she worked at various accountancy firms and also worked as an auditor for a financial institution.