B ANK I NG I NS I GH T S
Tackle the Compliance Crisis
Combined solutions for optimized workflow
and managed print services reduce the risks
and costs that banks face when complying with
complex regulations.
Many bankers feel like they’re working in fishbowls these
days. With an onslaught of sweeping regulations — from the
Dodd-Frank and Home Mortgage Disclosure acts to know-yourcustomer and anti-money-laundering rules — bank activities
are more closely scrutinized than ever. And compliance costs
are adding up. A bank official testifying before Congress last
year on behalf of the American Bankers Association estimated
that conforming to banking-industry regulations now costs the
industry approximately $50 billion a year, or about 12 percent
of total operating expenses.1
But costs aren’t the only considerations. To comply with all
these new rules, banks must tightly manage large volumes of
electronic data and paper documents, something that’s difficult
for banks that rely on siloed business processes and outdated
paper-based workflows. For example, to manually transport
paper records from branches to a processing center, bankers
walk through a multi-step process of bundling, unbundling and
auditing documents. Strict adherence to regulatory requirements
requires them to track non-compliant exceptions and ongoing
communication between branches and processing centers, while
demonstrating compliance at each stage of the process.
Fortunately, new solutions tailored for banks can significantly
reduce the costly drain on resources and reduce the heightened
risks of noncompliance created by outdated systems. What’s
needed is a comprehensive approach that’s engineered from
the start for security and auditing capabilities.
Ease Compliance with a Two-Pronged Attack
Modern solutions for effectively addressing compliance burdens
at banks must achieve three critical requirements:
✓ Automate document-intensive processes
✓ Tightly manage electronic and paper-based information
✓ Secure and optimize the print environment
These criteria are demanding, but they’re not unattainable.
MainSource Financial Group implemented a solution that met these
requirements in part to address internal audits that found cases of
noncompliance with internal standards and Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX)
rules. Now the group managing deposits operations is reaping
the rewards. “This year we had zero internal SOX findings,” says
Andy Saner, vice president of strategic channel banking. “That’s a
very proud accomplishment for me and my staff, and without the
electronic system it just would not have been possible.”
How can other banks achieve similar compliance success?
With a two-pronged solution that combines optimized workflow
technologies and managed print services (MPS).
Optimized workflow solutions create a comprehensive
platform for managing information using automated processes
for storing, processing, securing and retrieving data. Leading
solutions go beyond merely capturing electronic images
of branch forms and customer documents. They manage
information streaming in from multiple sources, including paper
documents, faxes, emails, digital signature pads, mobile apps
and websites. The best workflow systems also convert paperbased documents into digital files and then apply sophisticated
software-based tools to check records for completeness and
extract key data for routing to central banking systems and
central information repositories.
A well-managed print environment is essential for efficiently
handling documents and keeping them secure. With managed
print services, such as those offered by Lexmark International,
April 2013
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B ANK I NG I NS I GH T S
banks take advantage of third-party experts who can assure
proper access authorizations and other security controls are in
place. Managed-print providers can also help banks reduce
costs by rightsizing print environments to eliminate redundant or
outdated devices. In addition, managed-print services providers
can continuously monitor output devices to keep them maintained
and stocked with consumables and to gather data about usage
volumes, which can uncover opportunities for future optimizations.
A bank official testifying before Congress last
year estimated that conforming to bankingindustry regulations now costs the industry
approximately $50 billion a year.1
Together, optimized workflow solutions and MPS help
banks tackle compliance issues by closely managing sensitive
information no matter what format it’s in when it comes to
the bank. The combined solution then secures the data and
maintains audit trails that not only keep the information safe,
but enable banks to easily demonstrate compliance to auditors
and regulators. “Our new electronic platform allows our internal
auditors to send necessary documents to regulators much more
efficiently and quickly,” Saner says.
Real-World Benefits
The combination of optimized workflow solutions and MPS
provides significant compliance-efficiency benefits. Compliance
becomes easier to achieve and demonstrate, for example, because
optimized workflow solutions provide embedded checklists and
controls that prevent customer service representatives from
submitting files that lack required documentation.
In addition, document classification tools positively identify
document types without requiring bank employees to key-in
information at the point of capture. This mitigates “hustle”
fraud and increases compliance rates with local regulations.
Auditors aren’t required to evaluate a manual processing trail
because information is stored in a single repository, which
speeds information audits.
Bring Compliance under Control
New and more demanding regulations are a fact of business life
for banks today. Fortunately, comprehensive solutions exist for
effectively achieving and demonstrating compliance. The fishbowleffect may not go away anytime soon, but banks can make the
unnecessary risks and costs related to regulations disappear. ■
For more details about reducing the risks and costs
of complying with banking-industry regulations,
please visit Lexmark at www.lexmark.com.
1
American Bankers Association, “ABA Testifies on Impact of Regulatory
Compliance Costs on Community Banks,” http://www.aba.com/Press/Pag
es/050912ABATestifiesRegCompliance.aspx (accessed on April 12, 2013).
 A CHECKLIST FOR COMPLIANCE SUCCESS
While many vendors promise relief for compliance headaches,
not all solutions deliver the specialized tools and capabilities
the banking industry requires. Financial-services experts advise
bank executives to look for the following resources to get
compliance under control:
✓
Automated processes for capturing, distributing and
auditing information
✓ Access controls in multifunction printers (MFPs) and
workflow solutions that keep unauthorized people from
viewing private information
✓ Integrated tools for information auditing and reporting
✓ Connectors for integrating captured content directly
into backend systems to reduce errors and accelerate
business processes
✓ Data validation utilities that compare document data with
the bank's existing information sources to ensure accuracy
✓ Time-stamping and version controls to show who accessed
each piece of data and when
✓ Comprehensive, single-vendor solutions in which a single
vendor provides MFPs, distributed capture applications,
automated classification and extraction tools, and
underlying enterprise content management technology
✓ Multichannel capture at the point of service that enables
bank employees to capture information coming in from
a range of devices and applications
✓ Embedded checklists in workflow solutions that prevent
incomplete files from being distributed
✓ Sophisticated tools that extract data at the field level
of documents, which reduce the need for manual data
entries, speed processing and improve accuracy
✓ A vendor of workflow solutions and managed-print
services who has expertise in the banking industry.“
Vendor management is extremely important—it’s one of
those new regulatory frontiers where the government is
asking banks to do a better job,” says Andy Saner, a vice
president at MainSource Financial Group. “So when we
evaluate potential new partners, we look for a track record
that demonstrates trust, delivery and credibility. Lexmark
is a partner by which we measure all others.”
ABOUT LEXMARK
Lexmark International, Inc. (NYSE: LXK) is uniquely focused on
connecting unstructured print and digital information across
your enterprise with the processes, applications and people
that need it most.
© 2013 UBM LLC. All rights reserved.
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