Finboa
Automating Back Office Operations in Financial Institutions

Most banks and credit unions utilize “tracking” solutions like spreadsheets or databases to manage compliance and regulatory risk. However, tracking solutions only marginally improve productivity and efficiency for banks and credit union’s service delivery.

Employing solutions that are largely built to capture and track data, financial institutions only fix part of the problem when it comes to governance risk compliance (GRC). To mitigate growing GRC challenges, the FINBOA platform brings together digital transformation, regulatory compliance, and customer experience. It enables integration with banks existing applications using data exchange processes and robotic process automation; It automates manual tasks that financial institutions perform while complying with several regulations; It enables financial institutions to intuitively execute processes such as filling the forms, posting transaction information to the general ledger, and creating and sending notices. Further, the platform can generate ad-hoc reports and notify deadlines.

In an interview with CIO Applications, Dheeraj, vice president of technology of FINBOA, shares his insights into the firm’s aptness in offering an industry standard financial platform to the market for GRC.

What are the challenges you see brewing in the GRC technology space, and how does Finboa address them?

The most prominent pain point in the GRC space is the lack of comprehensive digital resources to bridge software, IT and compliance. Any given process in GRC consist of multiple challenges such as use of dated practices of paper, complex regulatory requirements, IT and data security, data analytics to measure losses, and more. To streamline such tasks vendors in the market provide solutions, but that are focused only specific task. Thus, we address all the aforementioned challenges by providing a cloud-based PCI DSS Certified platform that is embedded with the knowledge of regulatory requirements. By integrating those regulatory rules within business processes, such as a Reg E dispute tracking, FINBOA helps institutions focus on their core business rather than handling IT dependencies.

Could you elaborate on some of the key features of the platform and how they help clients unlock their full potential?

The FINBOA platform digitalizes and automates manual tasks of document management of financial institutions by deploying robotic process automation (RPA) while complying with several regulations. Case in point, take the very complex Regulation E requirements on electronic funds transfer (EFT) transfers imposed by CFPB on banks and credit unions and now electronic payment solutions. When a cardholder disputes a transaction on a debit card, the financial institution is required to resolve that dispute within 10 days.

In most cases the card holder is required to sign a dispute form acknowledging the circumstances of the dispute (called the WSUD). Reg E also gives financial institutions the ability to extend the resolution timeline provided they provisionally credit the customer for the disputed amount. Reg E also provides a way to reduce losses when a card holder does not report the EFT error in a timely manner.

FINBOA Reg E Dispute Tracking digitizes the WSUD, allowing bank customers to e-Sign the dispute from their mobile device. Customers may also submit the dispute using a self service feature in FINBOA. Once the financial institution receives the customer’s acknowledgement, the back office staff can select and run one of multiple “single-click” robotic automated processes to provisionally credit the customer (via a GL posting) and submit their dispute for chargeback with their processor. Utilizing the Reg E rules, FINBOA Dispute Tracking can also determine any consumer liabilities and adjust customer credits accordingly.

Ultimately, the platform automates the banks’ transactional processes such as consolidating grievance from users, formulates the impact on corresponding transactions due to the dispute, and allocates credit. Collectively, it encompasses every transactional detail in order to avoid discrepancies during audits. Thus, while reviewing banks’ transactional records, auditors can ensure that resolutions were carried out appropriately, check whether dispute resolution timelines were met and if customers were regularly updated with notices that contained accurate and sufficient information for meeting the regulatory requirements.

In terms of features and functionality, the platform notifies banks and credit unions about their approaching deadlines, generates documents, and posts transactional details to the general ledger in the bank’s core system.

How do you help financial institutions integrate Finboa’s platform with their existing software?

By keeping FINBOA core agnostic, and utilizing the latest development tools from Microsoft, we are able to enable integration with banks existing applications using data exchange processes and robotic process automation. With these integrations, FINBOA can consume data from the bank’s core and has the ability to post debits and credits to general ledger accounts.

One of the key delivery options offered by Finboa is that we provide not only an on-premise solution but also a cloud-based platform. Ninety-five percent of our clients are on our cloud solution, which enables us to manage their data in a PCI DSS-certified environment. This ensures that banks’ sensitive data is kept confidential and secure, thereby providing clients total control over their information.

What approach does Finboa take to onboard clients while delivering its solutions?

Customers can select an out-of-the-box best practices workflow based on a specific rule set like Reg E, or use our rapid workflow development and digitizing tools to create a bespoke workflow to meet the banks individual needs.

This enables financial institutions to intuitively execute processes such as filling the forms, posting transaction information to the general ledger, and creating and sending notices. Further, the platform can generate ad-hoc reports and notify key stakeholders about upcoming deadlines.

What does the future hold for the company?

FINBOA has been growing at a steady pace since we launched about 2 years ago. FINBOA not only helps financial institutions automate their business operations and stay compliant but also helps them deliver superior services to their customers. Our success has been driven by a continued focus on collaborating with clients and bridging the gaps they lack. We will continue to collaborate with them and prospect to digitalize and handle high-volume repeated tasks that previously required considerable human intervention.

The FINBOA platform brings together digital transformation, regulatory compliance and customer experience. We are making this technology more accessible to financial institutions both through ease of use and financially.