A Leading Middle Eastern Bank Transforms Key Payments Processes

Overview

The client is one of the leading financial services providers in the Sultanate of Oman with a strong presence in corporate banking, retail banking, investment banking, treasury, private banking, and asset management. The bank has one of the largest networks of ATMs and CDMs that spans across the country.

“ We wanted a technology solution that could ensure efficient and faster service delivery. We also wanted to free our knowledge workers from repetitive mundane tasks for better contribution. ”

Challenges

The bank wanted to deliver a faster and enhanced user experience. It wanted to offer premium digital services to its customers. However, its processes were largely manual, leading to high turnaround times, decreasing service levels, and operational silos. Knowledge workers of the bank were occupied with mundane, repetitive tasks.

Dependence on physical documents further aggravated these challenges with additional costs, physical damage, lack of security, and higher turnaround time. Further, most of its third-party applications and processes were operating in silos.
Some of the major challenges faced by the bank were –

• Data issues – There was high dependence across processes on multiple applications for fetching critical data. Moreover, even within an application data was required to be fetched from multiple screen reports. This not only resulted in high turnaround time and inefficiencies, but knowledge workers of the organization were also occupied with repetitive, redundant, and mundane tasks
• Non-uniform process – The processes were scattered across disparate modes of communication, review, and approvals. Review/approvals to the management/ senior management had to be submitted in physical forms. Approvals/ recommendations would sometimes be received through the mail. This resulted in information being scattered across multiple channels resulting in higher turnaround times, higher incidence of errors, missing information, and hampered customer experience
• Physical movements of documents – Risk-prone and time-consuming physical movement of documents resulted in escalating costs, damage to the documents, and lack of security; especially when the document came from remote areas. Moreover, there was always a risk of misplacement of the documents in transit
• Tracking the case – It was difficult to track the cases. Tracking a particular case could involve multiple inquiries to various users. Employees involved in ad hoc approval requests/memos spanned across HOD, AGM, DGM, GM to the CEO. It was proving to be extremely difficult for them to follow up regularly for each case

Implementation Impact

Using Newgen’s solutions, the bank successfully automated its outward remittances, (In-House transfers, ACH / RTGS Transfers & Swift Payments) standing orders, speed transfers, and inward inquiries. Not only did it enhance the process efficiency and free up the knowledge workers for more innovative and critical tasks, but it also ensured the delivery of faster services to customers. The bank was finally able to offer a rich digital customer experience and ensure effective SLA adherence.

Some of the major achievements of the implementation were –

• Enhanced Process Efficiencies:
  • Streamlined processing
  • Knowledge worker empowerment
• Improved Risk & Compliance:
  • Credit risk mitigation\
  • Enhanced visibility and control
• Enhanced Customer Experience:
  • Faster credit availability
  • Service differentiation
• Growth & Profitability:
  • Enhanced revenues
  • Reduced operational expenses