Many financial institutions are looking for ways to leverage new technologies like AI and blockchain to develop new services and better meet customer needs. Adopting these technologies often means going digital and moving IT solutions that were previously on-premises to the cloud to gain more power and storage and reduce administration. IT and compliance teams may worry that putting data in the cloud gives them less control and insight, but that is far from the truth. Moving to the cloud often helps financial institutions get a better handle on where their data lives and how to manage it—which is critical as evolving industry and government regulations regarding data management and protection are becoming more stringent.

At Sibos 2018 in Sydney, Australia, Microsoft showcased how comprehensive data governance technologies help financial institutions streamline and automate data governance processes. To learn more about our stand point on how better data management helps banks comply with ever-changing global compliance standards, read on.

Data governance and the need to go digital

Data governance refers to practices and processes that help financial institutions manage and protect data. Having an effective data governance approach has grown in importance as financial institutions, like most businesses today, face significant data overload. Not only do banks need to process more data, they need to understand the value of using data to drive innovation and modernize their operations and services.

Without the technology to properly filter, store, and protect data, financial institutions can’t differentiate between sensitive data assets that require higher levels of protection and those needed to run accurate client reports. Unfortunately, most banks today still have manual approaches to data governance, which can’t keep up with the pace of modern business. In fact, 69% of institutions don’t have procedures in place to ensure the creation of reports with relevant information, underlining the lack of insight they have into their data. In addition, because banks store huge amounts of unnecessary data, customers’ sensitive personal and financial data as well as company IP is put at greater risk of being compromised.

As if data governance wasn’t challenging enough, regulations are placing even more pressure on banks to get it under control. Penalties for data violations are stiff and companies need to be aware – 50% of affected US organizations aren’t compliant with the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and face fines up to four percent of their annual global revenue. To cope in such a challenging environment and better manage their data, banks are starting to look toward the cloud and digital technologies for answers. The cloud can also support the implementation of additional encryption and key management, a matter of utmost importance in a such a highly regulated industry.

Intelligent governance

To help maintain the integrity and confidentiality of data, Microsoft offers agile cloud technologies like Customer Lockbox for Azure and Compliance Manager. With Customer Lockbox, financial institutions can maximize data security and privacy by controlling the approval loop in the very rare occurrence a Microsoft support engineer needs to request access to customer content to resolve an issue. This allows the organization to continue to maintain full visibility and control over data and meet FedRAMP compliance requirements.

Microsoft and its partners are leaders in compliance, and our data governance solutions provide what financial institutions need to stay ahead of evolving regulations. To learn more about enhancing your data governance and privacy, visit Microsoft Trust Center for Financial Services.

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Digital disruption is no longer a surprise for today’s financial institutions. In the last decade alone, the rapid rise in technologies such as mobile banking apps and online payment systems has dramatically transformed the customer experience by providing more convenient banking options. While investing heavily in in technology to drive customer engagement is a good start on the journey to more intelligent banking, the next step is embracing technologies that improve and automate back-end processes.

Over the next few years, banks are looking to automate up to 25% of their processes to remain competitive and free employees up to focus on more high-value efforts.  It’s important to remember that automation isn’t going to replace bankers, but instead optimize how banks work by helping them become more agile. Read on to learn more about our perspective on how these exciting new technologies will help create the future of intelligent banking.

A prime opportunity for process automation

Process automation has the potential to help perform a wide variety of day-to-day tasks within banking operations including customer onboarding, payment processing, fraud detection, credit issuing, and email classification. The proposal creation process for corporate lending is another example of a backend workflow that’s ripe for digital transformation via automation.

Today, when a small business or corporation requests a loan, it often takes banks three to five weeks to provide a decision and up to three months to provide access to funds if the loan is approved. Much of this waiting time is the result of inefficient and manual processes. Many relationship managers still rely on email as their primary tool for generating proposals, sending spreadsheets and documents to proposal team members with no way to track tasks or control versions. As a result, lack of insight and document control issues often delay the proposal approval process and increase the amount of time customers must wait for a response.

Relying on legacy systems and manual processes increases the probability of inconsistent results and errors and limits the banks’ abilities to respond quickly. In a rapidly accelerating business environment where customers are shopping for the best interest rates and new fintech lenders are carving a niche in the industry, financial institutions can’t afford to make these costly mistakes. Automating proposal creation processes and other day-to-day operations frees up employees and better equips them to deliver a first-class customer experience and perform higher-value tasks that increase profitability and open new revenue streams.

Early proposal automation initiatives have delivered striking results for leading financial institutions. By automating legacy processes, some banks have decreased their customer response time to less than 10 minutes and are able to provide customers with access to funds within 24 hours. This dramatic decrease in processing time translates to sizeable business benefits. Analysts estimate that for a bank with a balance sheet of $250 billion, proposal automation could generate as much as $230 million in new annual profit due to increased cost efficiencies and revenue gains. In today’s competitive environment, these benefits are simply too big for financial institutions to ignore.

Partner with an industry-leading technology provider

While the benefits of proposal automation are clear, banks need help to make them a reality. Microsoft has developed Proposal Manager on the Microsoft 365 platform to empower today’s financial institutions to simplify proposal management and create professional, winning proposals. With Proposal Manager, the proposal creation process is streamlined by compiling data, call reports, lending content, and client documents—even those from legacy core systems—into one secure location that only team members can access. This makes it easy for relationship managers to create and manage proposal workflows, track proposal progress with built-in tracking and notifications, and enable team members to coauthor and digitally sign shared documents in real time. In addition, robust collaboration tools easily facilitate communication between departments for proposal reviews and whiteboarding sessions.

These capabilities keep the proposal process moving seamlessly to help banks meet tight deadlines, enhance the customer experience, decrease operational costs, and drive higher win rates—and it all . To learn more about how Microsoft Proposal Manager can help your team work more efficiently and close more deals, read this blog.

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