Low levels of process automation across client on-boarding and account opening in the Investment and Corporate banking space provides on-going challenges for banks and financial institutions in terms of revenue growth, client service and compliance management. So why has this space remained neglected for so long?

Well, in fairness it’s not so much negligence, but rather a lack of strategic holistic approach. The on-boarding discipline spans multiple business lines and various operational divisions, each with separate divisional responsibility and ownership. In general, process improvement and system investment tends to be focused within these operational divisions rather than across the end to end process. As each division campaigns for its share of annual budgets, a patchwork of disparate CRM extensions, BPM and other tools emerge, but the fundamental issues remain –  lengthy on-boarding times for corporate clients, inadequate process visibility and metrics, high operational and compliance costs.

Recently, we have seen moves in the market to address the on-boarding issue. A number of leading institutions have initiated strategic projects which target revenue growth and relationship expansion, in addition to operational and client service improvements. Common to all are cross-divisional process owners and working groups who drive forward an end to end strategic vision. Of course such visions cannot be realised overnight, but with clear direction, staged investment toward medium term process improvement is possible.

Looking forward, evolving compliance demands and new competitive benchmarks inevitably raises the question “How long can banks and FIs afford to maintain a patchwork of disparate systems and tools across their core revenue generating processes?” The time for strategic investment is “NOW”

Marc Murphy, CEO, Fenergo

www.fenergo.com