PATHWARD FINANCIAL, INC. 10-Q

Item 4. Controls and Procedures. EVALUATION OF DISCLOSURE CONTROLS AND PROCEDURES Management, under the direction of its Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer, is responsible for maintaining disclosure controls and procedures (as defined in Rules 13a-15(e) and 15d-15(e) under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the "1934 Act")) that are designed to ensure that information required to be disclosed in reports filed or submitted under the 1934 Act is recorded, processed, summarized and reported within the time periods specified in SEC rules and forms and that such information is accumulated and communicated to management, including the Company's Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer, to allow timely decisions regarding required disclosures. In connection with the preparation of this Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q, management evaluated the Company's disclosure controls and procedures. The evaluation was performed under the direction of the Company's Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer to determine the effectiveness, as of June 30, 2023, of the design and operation of the Company's disclosure controls and procedures. Based upon that evaluation, the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer concluded that, as of June 30, 2023, the Company’s disclosure controls and procedures were designed effectively to ensure timely alerting of material information relating to the Company required to be included in the Company's periodic SEC filings. The Company had previously disclosed a material weakness related to access permissions in two loan systems which resulted in a lack of segregation of duties over disbursements in which select individuals had the ability to both initiate and approve disbursements indicating that the user access provisioning and user entitlement review monitoring controls did not function to a precise level to ensure segregation of duties was maintained. The remediation of this condition was completed as of June 30, 2023. REMEDIATION PLAN FOR PREVIOUSLY REPORTED MATERIAL WEAKNESS The Company completed a broad risk assessment across all financially significant applications to identify and monitor conflicting roles which has strengthened the control environment surrounding user access controls. User access provisioning preventative controls were strengthened to monitor for the conflicting roles identified in the risk assessment described above. System entitlement detective reviews have increased frequency from annual to quarterly cycles. Management has also implemented a system application control to systematically restrict the ability to both initiate and disburse funds in one of the significant commercial systems which had inappropriate access leading to the material weakness. In combination, management believes remediation of the material weakness has occurred as of June 30, 2023. 51 Table of Contents INHERENT LIMITATIONS ON THE EFFECTIVENESS OF CONTROLS Any control system, no matter how well designed and operated, can provide only reasonable (not absolute) assurance that its objectives will be met. Furthermore, no evaluation of controls can provide absolute assurance that all control issues and instances of fraud, if any, have been detected. Further, the design of a control system must reflect the fact that there are resource constraints, and the benefits of controls must be considered relative to their costs. Because of the inherent limitations in a cost-effective control system, no evaluation of controls can provide absolute assurance that misstatements due to error or fraud will not occur or that all control issues and instances of fraud, if any, within the Company have been detected. CHANGES IN INTERNAL CONTROL OVER FINANCIAL REPORTING Management conducted an evaluation of the Company’s internal control over financial reporting to determine whether any changes occurred during the three months ended June 30, 2023 that have materially affected, or are reasonably likely to materially affect, the Company’s internal controls over financial reporting. Based on this evaluation, management concluded that, as of the end of the period covered by this report, there were changes in the Company’s internal controls over financial reporting (as such term is defined in Rules 13a-15(f) and 15d-15(f) under the 1934 Act) that were reported in the prior fiscal year and prior quarters where remediation was completed during the fiscal third quarter to which this report relates that could have materially affected the Company’s internal controls over financial reporting, as described above. 52 Table of Contents PATHWARD FINANCIAL, INC. PART II - OTHER INFORMATION FORM 10-Q