Business Control Solutions (BCS), provider of management consultancy services and financial control software to the financial services sector, today announced that a leading European investment bank has selected BCS Integrity to drive internal control improvements for its balance sheet substantiation and financial close process.
This centralised web-based platform will deliver increased transparency and control, while significantly driving down operational costs.
Prior to selecting BCS Integrity, the bank largely relied on manual internal financial control systems. With a wider financial transformation programme taking place, it sought enterprise-strength control infrastructure to support this. Following a review of available products, BCS Integrity was chosen due to its proven benefits and the BCS team's in-depth domain expertise. The solution was recently implemented by Deutsche Bank, where it handles reconciliation and account certification data across more than 1.25 million accounts and 52 countries every month.
Paul Brock, CEO of BCS, said: "BCS Integrity gives the bank a cost-effective solution that will drive account ownership, sign-off efficiency and real-time visibility across finance and operations. Its ability to wrap and aggregate the bank's existing ledger systems will highlight account disputes and high risk balances across multiple entities, delivering a new level of control and balance sheet risk management."
The implementation of BCS Integrity is expected to take just three months. On completion, users will gain a consolidated, real-time view of accounts across all functions, asset classes, and regions. In turn, this will speed up account sign-off by eliminating a number of manual tasks as well as issues caused by disparate regional systems.
Mike Bush, head of product development and markets at BCS, commented: "In today's marketplace it's vital that banks can demonstrate thorough due diligence and financial control. The impending implementation of BCS Integrity means that this bank will be better able to identify and mitigate issues that could result in a P&L impact. We're looking forward to delivering these tangible benefits to another global institution."
Integrity provides a consistent, financial governance framework over the entire account certification process. The account ownership functionality eliminates ambiguity and ensures that a named owner is allocated to every step in the sign-off process. It incorporates a controlled workflow for users, managers and financial directors to highlight concerns, make decisions based on timely information, and generate real-time balance, trend and risk reporting.