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Business self-assessment (BSA) is a business-unit self-monitoring process that identifies and documents the risk profile of a business activity and provides a mechanism to verify that those risks are appropriately controlled. First Union Home Equity Bank was the first business unit to implement a formal BSA program in First Union Corp. In early January 1997, the FUHEB BSA team held concept meetings to construct the FUHEB BSA program. The BSA team based the program on 3 core principles: 1. to educate teams to self-monitor risk, 2. to build a quantitative risk-scoring methodology, and 3. to create frequent results reporting. The success of any BSA program is measured by the performance improvement achieved by a functional unit. If properly implemented, the program offers the unit the capability to analyze performance trends, then enact change to significantly reduce potential risk. The problem assets team at FUHEB accepted the challenge by admitting its operational problems, learning a new method to monitor performance, and improving its control environment.