The private banking arm of Spanish banking giant Banco Santander and with nearly $10 billion of client assets under management, the fast growing Banco Santander International has brought speed and efficiency to the complex job of complying with important banking regulations. These include the Patriot Act of 2001, the Bank Secrecy Act, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, and the stipulations of the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC).

From Spreadsheets and Folders to Online Repository and Electronic Distribution

In deploying Policy Center, an online repository for all policy documents, the bank eliminated its inefficient, paper-based system of distributing and tracking more than 100 regulatory-related policy documents to its base of 500 employees. Beginning with FFIEC compliance, the bank's most time-consuming regulatory activity, the Center's mapping engine matched up the bank's policies with FFIEC regulations.

Polivec consultants performed a gap analysis to ensure that policies covered all aspects of the regulations. The solution's Awareness Center enabled the bank to distribute policies to employees, record their acceptance and attestation, and monitor their understanding of the policies through online testing.

"At any given point, I might be asked to provide proof of who among our employees has read accepted a policy - and demonstrate that it is the latest version of the policy," said Chief Information Security Officer William Josepha. "You need to be in compliance all the time, not just when there's an audit.

"We tried to build a home-grown system, but just didn't have the resources. And we needed to make our policies visible to the entire organization," Josepha continued.

Streamlined Compliance Efforts Bring Efficiency to Bank's Operations while Reducing Regulatory Risk

Assured that all FFIEC-related tasks were being performed, and able to readily report that performance to auditors and regulators, the bank s swiftly introduced further improvements. Santander uses the Polivec platform to automate compliance with additional banking regulations, with the bank's own procedures for operations and information security, and with laws and internal procedures in the human resources area. The bank has gained a competitive advantage and a renewed ability to pursue aggressive growth plans.

"The highest risk facing a US financial institution today is regulatory. By bringing transparency to the entire process of compliance, we can effectively mitigate the risks posed by failing to comply with policies and regulations. In essence, we have made our policies 'come alive,'" said CIO Augustin Abalo.

"Banking is about making money, growing the business, making it efficient. It is always about improving efficiency to be ahead of the competition. You have to change the way people work. This solution will do that - they will make a daily check of tasks first thing, and see what they have to do.

"Polivec is the integrator that brought our people, processes and technology together to make sure that what needs to get done gets done, and to mitigate risk," concluded Abalo.