Embrace The Game Changer: Transform Wealth Management Operations with AI-Driven Process Automations

Recent advancements in artificial intelligence, or AI, have captured attention and imagination around the world. In fact, AI and its enabling technology, machine learning, have been around long enough to drive game-changing benefits that we already enjoy as clients and staff.

For wealth managers in particular, AI can improve what both clients and staff experience, while saving on operational costs — in effect, better results for less investment. Supporting interactions with AI-driven tools such as automatic form fill, chatbots and automatic documentation filing can streamline operations and reduce the potential for human error. It also frees employees to focus on higher-value tasks such as supporting clients and developing new business. AI-driven automation can improve the top and bottom lines, while helping organizations tighten their compliance programs.

For example, the implementation of AI makes workflow automation tools for processes like client data transfer even more powerful, further elevating positive outcomes, such as freeing up back-office administrators from repetitive tasks. Imagine having a cleaner, better-documented process with fewer data-entry errors to resolve, and more time for staff to spend on higher-value tasks such as resolving those errors — or automating more processes. Moreover, making client data available across a wealth manager’s systems also creates opportunities to leverage that information to provide tailored services. The ability to offer clients new products and services at the right time can further improve the investor experience— particularly when wealth managers can offer these opportunities before clients are even aware they need them.

AI-driven process automation tools are already available and can be simple to customize or even build using low-code or no-code platforms. In other words, you don’t have to be a software engineer to get started. The key for advisors looking to take advantage of these tools is to take an incremental approach. There’s no need to do everything all at once—however, it is important to have a broader digital transformation strategy to serve as a guide and to prioritize your efforts in a way that yields the greatest operational impact over time.

Want to learn more?

Download the whitepaper “What ChatGPT Means for Wealth Management”.

Laserfiche Supports F&M Bank in Growing Assets from $7.6 to $11.7 Billion

With economic uncertainty being the new normal, the demand for reliable financial institutions has risen tremendously. F&M Bank is one institution that has been able to maintain its customer trust for the past century, seeing significant growth particularly in recent years. Now with 25 branches across Los Angeles, Orange, and Santa Barbara counties, F&M’s expansion has led to more information management needs, technology demands and regulatory compliance requirements.

The bank initially implemented Laserfiche as a document management system and quickly expanded its use organization-wide. F&M’s experience using Laserfiche as a document management system was the foundation for the bank’s expanded usage of Laserfiche for process automation.

“What started as a way to scan and search for information is now a fully integrated enterprise content management solution,” said Morgan Wheeler, business intelligence manager and vice president at F&M Bank. “We have roughly 90 different active workflows running to the tune of about 1,500 times per day. We have about 60 different production forms, and nearly every single bank employee uses Laserfiche as part of their job.”

As F&M grew and workplace needs evolved, the bank sought a business process automation solution to create more efficiency and connect with its core banking system for a seamless employee experience.

The bank turned to Laserfiche, and its Laserfiche solution provider CDI for support in leveraging the platform’s business process automation and integration capabilities. F&M integrated Laserfiche with its core banking system and deployed automated workflows that have sped up processes such as financial certification and loan applications, helping the organization to scale. Meanwhile, Laserfiche’s robust governance tools support compliance with regulatory requirements.

“At the close of 2019, the bank had $7.6 billion in assets, and we have now reached $11.7 billion,” said Wheeler, adding that there was a period during the onset of COVID during which F&M’s assets grew more in 100 days than the institution did in its first 95 years of operation (1907-2002). “Laserfiche has been a critical component in our growth.”

“Just storing things digitally isn’t enough. The information we store needs to be functional digital assets within wider business processes, and that assumes not only automation but integration.”

— Morgan Wheeler, Business Intelligence Manager and Vice President at F&M Bank

Increased Efficiency and Accuracy in the Financial Certification Process

One process F&M has reimagined to achieve impressive efficiency is financial certification, which previously required tremendous amounts of manual tasks to coordinate dollar amounts with all of the branches, emailed spreadsheets between managers and departments, and validation against historical information.

“For our branches, it means counting cash, teller drawer amounts, vault and cash center amounts — and we have all these different accounts, cash in transit, night-drops, merchant services … it’s a high-volume, complex activity,” Wheeler explained.

The bank deployed a Laserfiche solution that allows all departments across all branches to enter information about their accounts in a Laserfiche Form, which is prepopulated with information about what their financial position should be. The form calculates the difference and routes it to the bank’s finance and accounting department, and through proper approvals.

“The Laserfiche process has streamlined how we present our financial figures each month,” Wheeler said. “These figures are audited both externally and internally.”

The new process has saved the bank an estimated 700 hours per month of employee time, while providing a more transparent, prescribed procedure for certification. After the solution was deployed, employees were able to better utilize their time on value-added activities.

Overnight Process Deployment With Flexible Forms and Workflow Tools

As a bank deeply embedded in its community, F&M acted quickly during the COVID-19 crisis when information about the Payment Protection Program was released. It was an opportunity to help people when they needed it most — and the team had the tools to deliver with Laserfiche.

“There was very little guidance on how the payroll protection loans were supposed to go out,” Wheeler said.  “When the dust settled, F&M Bank issued more than $1 billion in PPP loans to the local community.”

The executive team assembled to map out how the bank would receive applications and distribute the money, and the F&M team stayed up all night creating a Laserfiche Form and PPP Loan application process.

“Within a matter of days we were funding loans. The nimbleness of Laserfiche Forms and workflow, plus SQL allowed us to build out an application process for those PPP loans literally overnight. I was not only impressed by F&M as an institution, but I was also impressed with our ability to create literally something out of nothing.”

— Morgan Wheeler, Business Intelligence Manager and Vice President at F&M Bank

Applicants began seeing their loans funded in a relatively short time frame, underscoring the bank’s commitment to its community, especially in a time of need.

Today, most of the bank’s loan processes involve Laserfiche, including the Loan Document Draw process: When a client asks for a loan, Laserfiche helps the bank centralize the process and effectively prepare the pieces of content that need to be gathered for the final document draw when the final loan agreement is drawn up for client signature. Having a strong presence in the commercial real estate industry, F&M has streamlined the collection of loan documents — which can be hundreds of pages long — in order to help ensure accuracy and speed.

Delivering on Innovation and Compliance

As an institution regulated by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Federal Reserve Bank, and California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI), F&M’s standardized compliance processes continue to pay dividends for the organization and its clients.

In today’s uncertain economic conditions, F&M has also leveraged its technology to build stronger business resilience. The bank’s team worked closely with Cities Digital to build a resilient infrastructure that allows the bank to confidently handle unplanned network events, and gracefully failover for planned upgrades and maintenance. “Due to the cooperative effort of Laserfiche, Cities Digital and our IT team, Laserfiche regularly achieves 99.99% uptime during business hours,” Wheeler said.

F&M’s use of Laserfiche has evolved along with the bank, empowering staff to innovate the way they do business while remaining compliant with industry regulations, and protecting client information and assets.

“Laserfiche is a critical way in which we deliver to our auditors, to our community, to our employees and, most importantly, to our clients.”

— Morgan Wheeler, Business Intelligence Manager and Vice President at F&M Bank

Learn more about how to invest in a Laserfiche solution today.

Don’t Get Fined: SEC Rule 17a-4 Updates You Should Know About

The First Changes in 25 Years, and Why?

SEC Rule 17a-4 and 18a-6 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, which define a set of electronic recordkeeping and prompt production of records requirements for registered broker-dealers, security-based swap dealers (“SBSDs”) and major security-based swap participants (“MSBSPs”), have their first updates in 25 years. The amendments are effective on January 3, 2023.

“The amendments are designed to modernize recordkeeping requirements given technological changes over the last two decades and to make the rule adaptable to new technologies in electronic recordkeeping”, quoted from the SEC recent press release. The most noticeable amendment is adding an audit trail as an alternative stated in Rule 17a-4(f)(2)(ii)(A) to the long-ago adopted requirement to preserve records in write-once, read-many (WORM) format. It eliminates the need for firms to deploy a separate electronic recordkeeping system used for compliance purposes only, which also lowers the compliance cost.

Adding Audit Trail as an Alternative Requirement to the Existing WORM-Format

Firms have the final discretion to adopt an electronic recordkeeping system that meets either the audit trail requirement or the WORM requirement. It should provide a complete time-stamped audit trail to preserve electronic records in a manner that permits the recreation of an original record if it is altered, overwritten or erased; defined terms extracted from the final rule include:
  1. All modifications to and deletions of a record or any part thereof
  2. The date and time of actions that create, modify or delete the record
  3. If applicable, the identity of the individual(s) who created, modified or deleted the record
  4. Any other information needed to maintain an audit trail of each distinct record to ensure the authenticity and reliability of the record will permit the re-creation of the original record and interim iterations of the record

The audit trail requirement particularly applies to final records required pursuant to the rules, in lieu of drafts or iterations of records that would not otherwise be required to be maintained and preserved under Rule 17a-3 and 17a-4 or Rules 18a-5 and 18a-6. Moreover, the electronic recordkeeping system used by the firms must automatically verify the completeness and accuracy of its processes for storing and retaining records electronically.

Other Major Amendments
  1. Eliminates notifying the designated examining authority (“DEA”) for compliance representation before deploying an electronic recordkeeping system under Rule 17a-4(f)(2)(i)
  2. Serializes the original and duplicate units of storage media and dates the required period of retention for the information placed on such electronic storage media, if applicable
  3. Be able to readily download and transfer copies of a record and its audit trail (if applicable) in a human readable format
  4. Uses either a backup recordkeeping system or other redundancy capabilities under 17a-4(f)(3)(iii) and 18a-6(e)(3)(iii)
  5. Provides access rights to the staff of the Commission and other relevant securities regulators to examinate the records via the electronic recordkeeping system

Don’t Get Fined by SEC and FINRA!

The SEC and FINRA continue to levy steep fines on wealth management firms. As recently as 2022, SEC charged 16 Wall Street firms with widespread recordkeeping failures. The firms admitted the facts and agreed to pay combined penalties of more than $1.1 billion. “In 2022 so far, there has been a record year with over 760 SEC enforcement actions representing $4 billion in fines,” says Timothy D. Welsh, President, CEO and Founder at Nexus Strategy, LLC, in a webinar conducted by WealthManagement.com and Laserfiche.

Adopt a Robust Enterprise Content Management System

The Compliance landscape keeps rapidly evolving. It is imperative to choose a comprehensive solution that supports the urge to tackle the increasing compliance challenges presented by SEC and FINRA rules with powerful audit trail functionalities, document and records management capabilities and process automation toolsets to make compliance a breeze.

Want to learn more? Access our Laserfiche Records Management solution page and learn more about how you can partner with Laserfiche to simplify recordkeeping compliance in your firms.

Automate or Die – The New Reality for Wealth Management Businesses

WEBINAR

Automate or Die – The New Reality for Wealth Management Businesses

It’s no secret that digital transformation is more than underway in wealth management, however, most advisory
firms are way behind the curve, saddled with creaky, manual and paper-based processes. As we know, wealth
management is a client-focused industry, and the client experience is rapidly becoming one of the key
differentiators for advisors and their firms. Currently, advisors are spending a significant amount of time on
paper-based operational processes that negatively affect the client experience. Many firms are looking to deploy
cloud-driven technologies that streamline manual operations using intuitive electronic forms, automated
workflows and quick access to client files in a secured, organized repository.

Join this complimentary webinar to discover how a low-code approach can accelerate digital transformation in
wealth management and enhance client experiences.

You will learn:

  • Trends for implementing technologies using a low-code/no-code approach
  • How to give advisors time back to focus on client engagement by automating operational processes while achieving SEC- and FINRA- compliance
  • How to jumpstart your business processes with pre-built solution templates and workflows
Please join us on
Date: May 9, 2023
Time: 4:15 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. ET (America/New York)
Duration: 1 hour

Berkshire Hathaway Homestate Companies Improved Data Accessibility for More Informed Decision Making

By simplifying its processes and making better, data-driven decisions, the group of insurance carriers elevates the experience it provides for employees and customers alike.

Transcript

Our focus is to provide worker’s compensation insurance products across a wide variety of industries. Our primary responsibility there is providing our policy holders with the products that they need and providing our injured workers with compassionate care, helping them to get healthy and back to work. You know, we want to give our customers tomorrow more value than they have today, so it’s about continually releasing products, giving them what they need as quickly as possible.

We’ve gone through a lot of growth over the last eight years and as the organization scaled, we realized we weren’t staying current in a lot of our technologies so we had to go out and find a document management solution for the company.

I was really looking at a document management system that was secure, stable and had the ability to scale. We took a look at Laserfiche from a technology standpoint and it fit nicely in the tech stack that we have, but we also like the fact that, from an enterprise perspective, we’re going to be able to grow and expand our Laserfiche footprint into other areas of the company, so really it has the ability to become an enterprise-class product. Right now we are using Laserfiche as a document management repository for all of our policy and underwriting applications.

Finance certainly uses it, marketing, loss control. This platform has a lot of features and functionality than the previous one. Already, some of the feedback from the users is, “Wow there’s a lot more to do here. It’s a lot more powerful.”

Laserfiche provides us with a secure and stable platform; its something that’s going to allow us to grow. It’s going to scale with us as we continue to scale as an organization and it’s really going to enable us to have a single enterprise document management system that we’re able to extract good data and information out of so that we can make better decisions for our customers moving forward.

Digital transformation is something that a lot of companies are faced with right now. For us it’s taking at the tools and technology that we use, getting on to consistent, consolidated platforms, leveraging common technology and technology stacks that developers want to develop in so we’re moving to a bunch more current technologies.

So as an injured worker is injured, we want to make that process, you know, it’s new for them, it’s something that they’re unsure of. How can we give better tools, better features,better functionality to our injured workers to that we can make the overall process easier for them so that their focus is on, “how do I get better, how do I get healthy, how do I return to work quicker” and not on, you know, “when am I getting my check, where is my claim status, you know, where is my doctor’s appointment.” Being able to provide these things and make that easy for them there are less things that they have to worry about.

Explore additional insights on the Laserfiche insurance solutions page: https://www.laserfiche.com/solutions/financial-services/insurance/

What Can Financial Services Gain from Process Automation?

Financial Services Firms Are Leveraging Process Automation to Drive Growth

Financial services (FS) organizations of all types, including wealth management firms, insurance firms, credit unions and banks are adopting technologies to stay ahead of the game under economic uncertainty. Customer experience and streamlined internal process efficiency are the major drivers of their digital transformation strategies which are critical accelerators of overall growth. A recent survey conducted by WealthManagement.com and Laserfiche found that 88% of the respondents changed workflows as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, especially for customer-facing processes such as adoption of virtual meetings, digital signatures, online client onboarding and processing of new accounts.

Challenges Facing Financial Services Firms and Reasons to Adopt Workflow Automation

Today’s customers look for intuitive, seamless and personalized digital engagement with organizations, whether it’s for new account openings, insurance claims, e-signature requests or wire transfer requests. In a recent survey conducted by Digital Insurance and Laserfiche, findings revealed that 77% of insurers prioritize customer experience in the majority or entirety of their digital transformation initiatives. Moreover, organizations that have streamlined their operational workflows are inclined to characterize their digital transformation initiatives as customer-centric. Thus, a customer’s decision to do business with an organization may be dependent on the robustness of a digitized experience.
Despite this change in customer expectations, many organizations are still having manual, error-prone and labor-intensive processes that drag on employees’ productivity and efficiency, including:
  • Re-keying data onto spreadsheets or across line-of-business applications.
  • Inability to retrieve or recall email conversations with customers.
  • Manual review and approval processes.
  • Manual execution of data analytics initiatives.

Due to these inefficiencies, many employees are swamped with tedious administrative tasks, which can increase the turnaround time for customer requests. As a result, customer service delivery is adversely affected. According to a recent survey conducted by Forrester Consulting, more than half of the respondents believe that their company’s tech stack is outdated and restrictive, which prevents employees from working efficiently.

Real-World Examples of Financial Services Firms Benefitting from Process Automation

How are your peers strategizing to get the most out of process automation? Rehmann in Michigan, a wealth management firm, has been designing workflows across professional service lines in a low-code/no-code approach to streamline data collection and reporting. Using Laserfiche forms and integrations with customer relationship management (CRM) software, information can always be automatically populated when a customer fills out an electronic form, e.g., new account opening. It saves customers’ time, provides accurate information to associates and supports compliance. Amy Flourry, wealth management director of operations at Rehmann, shared in a webinar that they opened 400 new accounts and brought in $200 million in new assets in 2022 alone. “Our biggest problem with [Laserfiche forms]…tends to be keeping up with demand for new ones,” said Flourry.

F&M Bank in Long Beach decided to use process automation in order to meet the demands of their rapid growth and evolving workplace. They decided to go beyond a simple document management solution and transform it into a fully integrated enterprise content management system that included process automation solutions and integrations with their core banking system. For example, they leveraged Laserfiche in most of their loan processes, “the nimbleness of Laserfiche Forms and workflow, plus SQL allowed us to build out an application process for those PPP loans literally overnight. I was not only impressed by F&M as an institution, but I was also impressed with our ability to create literally something out of nothing,” said Morgan Wheeler, business intelligence manager and assistant vice president at F&M Bank.

Customer experience was the major focus of Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Group (MSIG) Hong Kong throughout the design of its process automation strategy. MSIG Hong Kong leverages Laserfiche to develop a widely recognized EASY Claims System that helps manage all claims in a centralized platform. It saves more than 200 workdays a year for the claims processing organization-wide, supports business continuity in case of unprecedented transitions and maintains a high level of customer service at the same time. “Claims is only the beginning of our digital transformation. Since implementing Laserfiche, we are looking at expanding to multiple channels, underwriting teams and core business processes to digitize and automate as well,” said Alan Yue, senior vice president of information technology at MSIG Hong Kong.

Benefits of Digital Process Automation for Financial Services Firms

Financial services organizations must be nimble and innovative to digitally transform how they provide services throughout the customer life cycle. One way to achieve digital transformation in such a way is to utilize digital process automation (DPA), which helps eliminate manual steps and improve user experience for customers, employees and vendors. By leveraging electronic forms, business process management and reporting and analytics, key advantages of DPA include:

Avoiding capturing information through error-prone and inconsistent methods: Operation teams receive customer information and requests digitally with metadata in an audited and tracked approach.

Eliminating manual reviews and approvals, lost documents and unknown statuses: Workflows are triggered once requests come in — for example, reviews are automatically routed to appropriate parties for rounds of approval with due reminders.

Spotting bottlenecks of delayed tasks: Get a clear picture of workflows using dashboards so teams can identify where and when delays are happening.

Integrating with core business applications and systems: Eliminate data silos and improve collaboration.

Improving customer experience: Customers receive notifications at each step of their requests, resulting in increased transparency between them and the organization they’re doing business with.

Freeing up time for employees: Enable employees to spend their time on more value-driven tasks and drive productivity.

Archiving information and supporting documents: Bolster your efforts to stay in compliance with regulations and audits using records retention tools.

Scarce IT resources remain another challenge for financial services organizations even if they are ambitious to evolve. Pre-built solution templates help organizations jumpstart automation with less overhead on these resources. Laserfiche users have the ability to get these kinds of templates from the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace, which provides more than 100 publicly accessible, industry-vetted and departmental solution templates for organizations accelerating digital transformation.

Learn more about how Laserfiche solutions help financial institutions drive business growth and productivity.
Download eBook: The Business Process Automation Buyer’s Guide

302? 404? Everything You Need to Know About Sarbanes-Oxley

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, commonly referred to as SOX, was designed with the goal of implementing accounting and disclosure requirements that increase transparency in corporate governance and financial reporting with a formalized system of internal checks and balances.

Effective in 2006, all publicly-traded companies in the United States, including all wholly-owned subsidiaries and all publicly-traded non-US companies doing in business in the US, are required to implement and report internal accounting controls to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for compliance under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. In addition, certain provisions of Sarbanes-Oxley also apply to privately-held companies that are preparing for their initial public offering (IPO).

Formal penalties for non-compliance with SOX can include:
  • Fines
  • Removal from listings on public stock exchanges
  • Invalidation of Directors and Officers (D&O) insurance policies

CEOs and CFOs who willfully submit an incorrect certification to a SOX compliance audit can face fines of up to $5 million and up to 20 years in jail.

Each system that contributes to financial reports and disclosures must be monitored and tracked with audit trails in order to comply with SOX regulations. Under the SOX law, organizations must exercise tight control over financial reports and transactions, including document controls, disclosure methods and executives’ approval.

An effective Content Services Platform/Digital Document Management solution contains powerful organizational tools that elevate any organization’s compliance program with the ability to manage data with workflow automation, a complete audit trail, and security features.

There are two sections of the SOX Act which have clear implications for data management, audit trail reporting and security:

Section 302 Corporate Responsibility for Financial Reports:

This section relates to a company’s financial reporting. The act requires a company’s CEO and CFO to personally certify that all records are complete and accurate. Specifically, they must confirm that they accept personal responsibility for all internal controls and have reviewed these controls in the past 90 days.

Section 404 Management Assessment of Internal Controls:

This section states that annual disclosures and quarterly updates must be provided to shareholders and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. It stipulates further requirements for the monitoring and maintenance of internal controls related to the company’s accounting and financials. It requires businesses to have an annual audit of these controls performed by an outside firm. This audit assesses the effectiveness of all internal controls and reports its findings back directly to the SEC.

Automating AP Processes Enables Compliance with SOX

Organizations are faced with regulations that require them to control information, retain it and make it accessible to external auditors. Three key areas that can help support standardized, secure, internal controls for business processes include; Digital document management, automated workflows and record retention solutions implemented to ensure compliance procedures are consistently followed and can be easily tracked and audited.

An effective Content Services Platform/Digital Document Management solution provides internal controls with clear visibility into the network with complete oversight and control of secure access to the network, applications, databases, and sensitive data. Automation of internal [AP] processes enforces standardized operating procedures that ensure data authenticity, integrity, compliance and retention. With a verifiable audit trail, staff can document every step to auditors and provide them with detailed reports that demonstrate changes made to information systems can be detected, corrections verified, and variances explained.

A centralized solution allows organizations to organize, and maintain records on these automated processes in a secure, dynamic environment. In addition, it eases the cost and burden of manually monitoring systems and provides enhanced reports to evaluate procedures and ensure consistent and repeatable activities and processes.

In addition to ensuring that your organization passes external compliance audits for Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, and other industry-specific regulations, you can save time and resources by implementing document management best practices. An optimized digital document management solution can help your organization comply with SOX with monitored, logged and audited activities including; information access, login, network, user, account and database activity.

Data Management with Workflow Automation
  • Replace manual processes and provide a documented audit trail for the flow of information and documents.
  • Track all activity with automated workflow functionality that enables you to electronically match and route invoices for approval, review and exceptions resolution and post to ERP system.
  • Capture, index and analyze all electronic data, including report data from print streams and items within workflows.
  • Enable robust search and retrieval of documents and transactions with multiple indexing capabilities.
  • Automate document capture, classification and coding to reduce input errors.
  • Ensure processes and procedures are followed and reports are available to perform self-auditing checks for internal compliance.
  • Support version control for documents which allows visibility into when and who accessed which files, and the actions taken.
  • Granular content-type and class-level access control with feature and function permissions.

Compliance and Record Retention
  • Automate life cycle management to process records and record folders according to a life cycle, through creation, retrieval, storage, hold status and final disposition with automatic email notification to an approver before deletion.
  • Create custom file and folder structure and configure retention rules specific to the organization and in full compliance with government or industry regulations to prevent inappropriate or premature file deletion.
  • Gives you instant, comprehensive visibility into your repository, workflows and record retention activity to quickly generate reports of records currently eligible for cutoff, transfer, and destruction dispositions, and vital record review or records on hold.
  • Simplify the audit process, centralize your documents, images, photos, emails, voice files, faxes, and other documents in a fully searchable repository, or point to their location in other applications for fast, easy retrieval.
  • Demonstrate controls that reflect standards set by Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP).
  • Robust search and retrieval functionality — information is instantly available in search results.

Security and Audit Trail 
  • Role based access controls — defined access rights and permissions for individual users, groups and roles to information assets within the system and assignment of privileges, such as viewing, editing, printing and downloading, which restrict unauthorized activity.
  • Tracks information access, login, users, network, applications, database activity and access to sensitive data with reporting to perform self-auditing checks for internal compliance.
  • Security classification hierarchy with segregation of duties and reports showing who handled, routed, approved and processed transactions.
  • Unchangeable audit log — all key usage is recorded and unchangeable including logging and auditing of permission and security changes.
  • Preserve data in its purest form — access to historical data for audit and forensic requirements and evidentiary presentation.
  • Tracks unauthorized modifications of data and configurations — automatically flags altered database files so that internal and external auditors can be confident they are viewing accurate and complete information

Key Benefits of AP Automation
  • Mitigate Risk and Avoid Noncompliance Fines
  • Prevent Fraud
  • Improve Visibility, Efficiency and Profitability
  • Develop Accurate Financial Reporting
  • Comply with Applicable Federal, State, Local Laws and Business Rules
  • Access to Historical Data for Audit and Forensic Activities
  • Improved Decision Making
  • Leverage AP Staff Resources on Higher–value Activities
  • Reduce Cost of AP Processes and Compliance
  • Capture Available Early Pay Discounts
  • Automating Document Retention and Destruction
  • Reducing the Costs of Long-term Data Preservation
  • Eliminating the Costs of Offsite Storage
  • Lowering the Costs of In-house Storage

A holistic Content Services Platform with digital document management, automated workflows, record retention and security controls along with the alignment of people, processes, and policy controls, helps enable organizations to satisfy the requirements for sections 302 and 404 and meet SOX requirements.

By leveraging existing technology and tools, organizations can identify, assess, and report on the status and security of financial-related processes and information, and can provide auditors with tangible evidence of their information security initiatives.

With a verifiable audit trail, staff can then document every step to auditors or assessors and provide them with detailed reports that demonstrate changes made to information systems can be detected, corrections verified, and anomalies explained.

By implementing effective, comprehensive policies and procedures for establishing accountability and consistent data collection, retention, and reporting practices, your organization can mitigate risk and enhance compliance for SOX Sections 302 and 404 requirements and keep costs under control.

Explore More

Get work done faster and gain new insights into finances with powerful document management and business process automation. Explore Laserfiche’s solutions for Accounting and Finance.

Click here to view the complete H.R. 3763 Sarbanes – Oxley Act of 2002 / text.

Putting Customers First in Claims Processing

The focus on customer experience was one of the core drivers in the process automation strategy for MSIG Hong Kong (MSIG), embracing customer needs in light of a shifting technological landscape and major disruptions. The company sought to phase out legacy systems and increase efficiency for its claims submission service, requiring a highly adaptable content services tool to do so.

Since implementing Laserfiche for claims in 10 different product lines, the MSIG claims team can now manage all claims in a centralized platform, allowing staff to focus on more important claim assessment tasks. By investing in digital transformation for the organization’s EASY Claims System, MSIG has been able to differentiate itself in Hong Kong’s highly competitive insurance industry. The organization’s EASY Claims system has received wide recognition in Asia’s insurance landscape, as well as won MSIG a number of industry awards. In 2019, the company won a Laserfiche Run Smarter Award; in 2024, MSIG earned the Laserfiche Run Smarter Award for Best Program ROI.

“Laserfiche is the catalyst for our users and customers to improve their day-to-day work experiences,” said Alan Yue, Senior Vice President of Information Technology at MSIG.

Seeking a means to respond to customer needs and enable staff to transition to remote working arrangements during periods of instability during the COVID-19 pandemic, Laserfiche has also helped MSIG successfully achieve business continuity, maintaining a high level of operational efficiency and customer service through dedicated portals.

Putting Customers First

Providing general insurance solutions for more than 100 years, MSIG Holdings (Asia) Pte. Ltd. has a history of combining global and local best practices in the organization’s customer-focused approach, believing that the relationship between insurance companies and customers should be based on trust. This commitment to customers led the organization to reassess its reliance on manual legacy systems for process management. MSIG recognized that customers are embracing more digital solutions, presenting an opportunity to make correspondence with clients more seamless and efficient, as well as reengineer the IT infrastructure.

“As a core part of our business, the claims system is one of the most important parts of the MSIG customer journey,” Yue said. “We realized that the entire process was actually quite paper-driven, making it the perfect candidate to digitalize and automate.”

MSIG initiated a business transformation program known internally as “Transformer” in 2017. Laserfiche was chosen as MSIG’s core digital transformation solution with the goal of automating manual and paper-based core business processes, targeting the customer claims submission platform as a starting point. Eventually named EASY Claims, the system improved both operational efficiency and service with a focus on the customer experience. The platform supports self-service submissions, as well as provides transparency of claims status to MSIG customers.

Within the first three months of launch, EASY Claims significantly improved efficiency at MSIG, automating over 100,000 tasks that previously required manual user input. Additionally, the number of clients submitting claims via the new system has increased by up to 80%. This has streamlined and simplified the claims submission process for customers, aligning with shifting technological expectations and improving response times.

The EASY Claims system also improved the experience for staff processing customer submissions. Originally, acknowledging a newly submitted claim could take two days. Today, it takes fewer than 15 minutes. This translates to a savings of more than 200 work days a year for the claims processing staff organization-wide. The property claims management team specifically was able to save 57 days a year through the EASY Claims system.

The initiative has created the opportunity for ongoing optimization. In 2022, MSIG introduced Zero Touch for Helper insurance plan claims. Zero Touch is MSIG’s digital solution for claims assessment, enabling customers to submit their claims form, supporting documents and contact details online. The system then checks the customer’s claims history, policy validity and claim payment amount. For eligible clinical or dental expenses claims, payments are settled in just two working days. MSIG is planning to add Zero Touch to more products, creating a more seamless customer experience across product lines.

Along with facilitating claims submission for customers and acknowledgement in the backend, the automated process has helped save 12 days a year during the claims finalization stage. In terms of improved staff efficiency, MSIG has increased overall productivity by 1.4 times per hiring cycle within the Claims department alone. As a team with a significant amount of customer facetime and interaction, the Claims department’s increased productivity has improved both employee and customer experience.

In 2022, MSIG Hong Kong honored over HK$356 million, with a claims ratio of 92.9%, seeing a consistent increase for three consecutive years. The organization also reduced the number of complaints received by 50% in two years.

“Claims is only the beginning of our digital transformation. Since implementing Laserfiche, we are looking at expanding to multiple channels, underwriting teams and core business processes to digitize and automate as well,” said Yue.

Enhancing Customer Service During COVID-19

Even during major disruptions, it is important for companies to carry out vital processes and services to customers — especially in the context of insurance where clients may be working through sudden, unexpected incidents. As the platform that powers the EASY Claims system, Laserfiche has helped to ensure a high level of customer service and a user-friendly, customer-oriented interface. The platform removes friction from the process of filing a claim, with intuitive features such as a “save-as-draft” function that enables customers to retrieve incomplete forms at any time using an email link, and smart suggestions that provide basic information and documents that customers will need to make a claim before they fill out the form. Customers can also receive SMS messages, email confirmations and tracking numbers to stay informed of the status of their claims.

The system has also been a scalable solution for MSIG to continue providing services to customers with minimal interruptions.

In accordance with government recommendations, MSIG was able to successfully initiate a work-from-home arrangement for all staff in the Hong Kong office less than one week after the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the city. As Laserfiche automates key steps in claims submission and processing, MSIG staff can focus on pertinent tasks without needing to be in the office. From the customer perspective, claims can be submitted as normal, even during the height of the pandemic.
Establishing a digital infrastructure that supports automation early on has enabled MSIG to enhance the quality and scope of service and gain recognition as a provider of general insurance, as well as build long-term business continuity and resiliency.

“Laserfiche has helped us to develop a system in line with our commitment to our customers and staff,” Yue explained. “We can put their health and safety first while responding to current challenges and planning for the future.”

Investing in the Future

Recognizing that the insurance industry has historically relied on legacy processes, MSIG looked to digitize its claim service, rebuilding it to address both staff and client needs. With core business processes established between 10 to 20 years prior, the firm had an intimate knowledge of its users’ needs, refreshing a part of its business that focused heavily on customer and employee input. Working with Laserfiche to develop a nimble IT strategy, MSIG has been able to improve the customer and back-end experience within the claims process without disrupting day-to-day operations.
“Both business and technology landscapes have experienced so much rapid change and development,” said Yue. “These are the primary driver for MSIG’s digital transformation program, equipping us to anticipate our future needs as well as our customer expectations.”

Experiencing unprecedented and unanticipated changes in 2020, the EASY Claims System has proven itself to be highly adaptable, highlighting the need for digital transformation at MSIG. With claims as an obvious starting point, MSIG is looking to expand Laserfiche to other departments and processes. The organization is preparing to introduce claims process tracking for customers, allowing customers to track their claims in real time through the MSIG app or website — further enhancing visibility and continuing to build trust with customers.

“We now have a way to differentiate ourselves within Hong Kong’s insurance marketplace,” said Yue. “Laserfiche has helped users throughout the company to identify opportunities to improve day-to-day work. The sky is the limit.”

To learn more about how Laserfiche drives digital transformation, schedule a consultation today.

Bank of China Eliminated 90% of Paper Usage and Simplified Compliance Processes

The Bank of China uses Laserfiche to automate workflows, meet compliance requirements and take a modern approach to banking operations.

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The Bank of China as a group was founded in 1912 and is the second oldest bank that is still in existence. The bank is the fifth largest bank by capital in the world as of this year. And we are proud to be the most globally oriented. We have over 500 employees and our assets is over $50 billion. The bank started using Laserfiche over 10 years ago and at first, Laserfiche was used as solely a storage for old bank document files as a sort of a hard drive — it’s been over 10 years.

And when I first joined the bank about four years ago, I started looking more into the other services offered by Laserfiche and stumbled into Laserfiche’s offerings that were a lot more than just a repository for documentation management — more process management, workflow management. So that’s where I submitted the idea of paperless to the bank. We got rid of 90% of paper and also helped improve 30% of the manual work and more importantly, Laserfiche also help us meet a lot of regulatory compliance requirements.

My favorite part of Laserfiche I think is the people. Laserfiche helped the bank catch up about 15 years that we were lagging behind, especially when we are talking about paperless, you know, automating manual work. I’m Frank Chen and I’m using Laserfiche to empower Bank of China.

Explore additional insights on the Laserfiche banking solutions page: https://www.laserfiche.com/solutions/financial-services/banks-and-credit-unions/

Glasgow Credit Union Digitally Transforms the Member Experience and Supports Business Resilience

Glasgow Credit Union is one of the largest credit unions in Europe, serving the greater Glasgow area with a service scope focusing on savings and loans. Experiencing steady growth, the organization used Laserfiche to power a number of digital transformation initiatives aimed at reducing reliance on manual processes and ensuring that the organization could scale while maintaining the high-quality customer experience for which the credit union is known.

The organization initially implemented Laserfiche in 2016 as a document management platform, integrating it with Glasgow’s CRM system to improve access to information for customers and employees. Since then, Laserfiche has helped achieve business process automation to digitize and streamline loan processing. With a completely automated lending platform, clients are offered more competitive lending services, enabling customers to complete loan approvals in under an hour.

“Laserfiche is quite central to all we do,” said Paul McFarlane, chief technology officer at Glasgow Credit Union.

Additionally, Glasgow Credit Union’s digital initiatives have supported business continuity during the COVID-19 pandemic, enabling the organization to rapidly pivot to more digitally focused services. This aligns with expansion and scalability needs: Since implementing Laserfiche, membership has expanded to around 55,000 customers, representing nearly GBP 200 million (US$277 million*) in assets.

A Customer-Focused, Streamlined Lending Process

Founded in 1989, Glasgow Credit Union has grown substantially over the past four decades but its aim has remained the same: helping members and ensuring they have access to friendly, professional financial services that meet their needs. As member expectations have evolved, the credit union has prioritized digital transformation to provide the best possible member experience.

“It’s not just us, but in our sector, we didn’t have a lot of scalability in a lot of our processes,” McFarlane said. “So our application journey, specifically to onboard a member and apply for a loan, was quite a cumbersome process because it was paper-heavy and there was a lot of manual tasks. … There was no automation. Initially there were no web services as well.”

Using Laserfiche, the organization created an automated lending platform which digitized and centralized loan applications, increasing accessibility of information for staff; and ultimately accelerated loan processing for clients. With the understanding that an easy and fast new member onboarding is fundamental to a member’s experience, the credit union also digitized and streamlined the member onboarding process by integrating Laserfiche with its existing financial management application, Curtains, along with DocuSign. New members can now join the credit union and apply for funds within 15 minutes — a process that used to take up to three days.

With an eye toward enhancing the full client experience, Glasgow Credit Union also launched an initiative to streamline the borrowing process. This required as fast a turnaround as possible for customer loans to be issued once their loan applications were accepted. Previously handling around 24,000 loan agreements each year, the company manually processed and archived 120,000 sheets of paper. Customers were manually notified by staff at each stage of the loan journey, resulting in 10,000 resource hours each year.

“The feedback from members was phenomenal — the speed, the efficiency, the fact that we didn’t have to wait for the post to deliver the paper, and how easy it was to do business with us after we had improved those processes,” said McFarlane.

The Glasgow Credit Union team re-engineered and automated the loan agreement process so that loans could be completed in under an hour rather than several days. Approximately 80% of applications were completed digitally prior to the pandemic. COVID-19 increased reliance on digital processes, however, and today, nearly all loan applications are now submitted and processed in a digital manner, benefiting both clients and staff in terms of efficiency and turnaround.

“Our work with Laserfiche wasn’t about preparing for something like COVID — I don’t think anybody was preparing for something like COVID,” McFarlane explained. “Our decision to digitalize was all about efficiency; it was about speed and providing a better, slicker service to our members. But if we hadn’t done that, it would have been a different conversation that we’re having today.”

Improving the Customer Journey

Digitization has also benefited Glasgow Credit Union members by providing the ability to initiate joining and borrowing processes even after office business hours. An automated self-serve channel allows the processes to be kicked off without staff supervision. After initiating an application process, Laserfiche integrations with third party applications — DocuSign, Curtains, and a bespoke front-end platform — seamlessly drive the loan application process through a workflow from the initial application stage to final pay out.

Documents are delivered back to customers for signing, bringing them to the next application stage. The automated process saves more than 150 employee hours each week. Employees have reclaimed this time to focus on other parts of the business, expanding operational capacity.

“We’ve got Laserfiche integrated with our core technologies, so users can view documents through our front-end that are pulled from the Laserfiche platform, without having to open up separate applications,” said McFarlane. “Employees find it quite easy that they’re not having to work across multiple platforms.”

Underlying Glasgow Credit Union’s integration and process automation initiatives, the organization has robust records management practices — a critical element to success in the financial services industry. Laserfiche has supported the organization’s information governance, enabling the credit union to manage the full life cycle of documents and supporting compliance with European data protection regulations.

During the first year after deploying Laserfiche, Glasgow Credit Union experienced an income growth exceeding GBP 1 million (US$1.31 million*), as well as a GBP 40 million (US$52.44 million*) increase in loan volumes from 2017 to 2018. Followed by this business growth, the credit union’s team now feels they have an infinite operational capacity for loan processing. After four years, Glasgow Credit Union has achieved ROI equating to their original investment in the Laserfiche platform. Factoring in resource savings and improved customer journey times, the credit union has a scalable model that has resulted in significant growth in business.

As a central, business-critical software solution, Laserfiche has helped Glasgow Credit Union with existing scalability and project prioritization goals, as well as helped to respond to customer needs during the COVID-19 pandemic. Beyond member onboarding and loan applications, the organization is looking to implement Laserfiche in a similar capacity in mortgage applications and other business units.

“I’m amazed at the simplicity of integrating Laserfiche with our existing processes and other pieces of business-critical technology,” said McFarlane. “Our vision is to be the lender of choice within our marketplace in Glasgow – Laserfiche has helped us achieve that.”

*USD conversion subject to current exchange rate.

Find out more about how Laserfiche helps to transform credit unions here.

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