Bradford & Bingley Group (B&B), a leading financial services institution focused on providing mortgages and savings products, has announced its successful implementation of a transactional monitoring solution from specialist Northland Solutions.
B&B's financial crime management team has deployed Compliance Alert from Northland Solutions across their entire business platform including mortgage lending and savings.
The decision to implement a new unified system was taken as part of B&B's move to reinforce and assure compliance with all relevant legislation, regulation and financial sector industry guidance, the forthcoming European Third Directive and the Group's Financial Crime Policy. Northland Solutions was selected after an extensive procurement process which considered the main players in this market.
Ken Bridson, Head of Financial Crime Management & MLRO at B&B comments: "Implementing a Transaction Monitoring System (TMS) necessitates combining customer and transactional information as well as the challenging process of data cleansing and loading. We chose Northland for their domain expertise and because they could offer product and implementation from a single source. We have been delighted with our choice."
"Northland provided a flexible and dedicated team of people who worked with us to overcome the challenges we faced. The deployment of TMS has enabled us to integrate the financial crime compliance requirements of each business unit onto one system, so providing greater control over our financial crime risks allowing us to employ best business practice and demonstrate regulatory compliance."
The solution from Northland replaces a number of automated and manual systems. B&B's requirements were complex, with different business units, often using discrete systems and processes. B&B needed an integrated system which would allow them to monitor customer activity across business units and clearly demonstrate legislative and regulatory compliance, Northland Solutions, Compliance Alert, assists us to do this."
Northland Solutions managing director Gary Duxbury adds: "We're delighted to have B&B as a client which we attribute to the pedigree of our product and proven track record in the mid-s-size mortgage and savings sector. We pride ourselves on our business knowledge and commitment to delivering pragmatic and more rewarding customer experience. That's what underpins our significant success in the mortgage and savings sector, where, to date, Compliance Alert is installed at four of the major players in the UK market."
B&B make optimum use of Compliance Alert by consolidating all of its activities, including a facility to monitor Sanctions and Politically Exposed Persons (PEPS) lists, within the integrated case management workflow module. This "Compliance Cockpit" provides a single view of the entire business and one-stop management reporting. With the ever-increasing investigation workload in any modern financial crime compliance team, tools that will automate and support this, as well as auditing the process in the background, provide significant increases in productivity and staff morale.