Standard Bank Group

The South Africa bank’s fleet management division nearly eliminated manual tasks, more efficiently utilizing existing resources and exponentially growing its business.

My name is Justin Thomas. I work for Standard Bank Group it’s bank in Africa. I head up strategic alliances for Standard Bank fleet management as well as product development. Our bank is 150 years old so it’s got legacy platforms, legacy systems, it comes with a history that the journey we went on was essentially to look for systems that could support our growth and being able to support our customers in a manner that they expect.

Essentially what we did with Laserfiche was digitize the start to the end process. So, on receipt of a quotation all the way to sourcing a vehicle, providing a customer a quotation, to then disbursing the vehicle to the client. That entire process was Laserfiche essentially. We made sure that the whole distribution of work became a lot more structured. It was a lot more planned in terms of staff workforce capability and we saw immediate benefit in that particular spec, so we were losing mails and customers were complaining and that was no longer the case. Every mail was captured, every email was tracked, we could determine when it came in and when it was executed which gave us a lot of comfort in terms of the service we are offering to our customer.

Our business is also growing exponentially and one of the factors we’ve always been concerned about is the more we put scale on the more we have to resource accordingly. What the Laserfiche implementation has done is it has given us comfort that we can comfortably put more business on without having to increase resourcing commensurately. We are able to now use our existing resourcing in a much more efficient manner.

The advice I would give to a future Laserfiche users would be to have a purpose in mind in terms of what they want to achieve. Make sure you get the right people involved in your projects get people that that are open to a different approach and let them guide the process.

One of the things we realized is that the closer we could bring the Laserfiche guys to our particular business decision makers, the easier the sell, the easier the value was seen and then make sure that everybody has the vision, where this business is going to or where your business is going to.

I think the journey we are on with Laserfiche is something that is really going to transform our business.  It’s one element of what we’re busy with but it’s a big element. We are appreciative of that.

Intertrust Enhances Digital Collaboration and Document Management

Thanks to Laserfiche, global trust company Intertrust provides easy and secure access to documents for clients and has saved on real-estate costs by digitizing documents, even with a growing workforce.

My name is David Humphrey. I work for Intertrust Group. My main responsibilities are looking after Laserfiche globally. Intertrust is a trust company. They’re global, they supply accountings or legal or depending on what the company is looking for, it may be payroll.

We were so full of paper, it was just paper everywhere and they wanted a solution that basically would allow us to scan everything and have it stored in one place. Intertrust was introduced to Laserfiche way back in 2007 in Guernsey and then we started to look for one globally, they looked at a few but then decided to go with Laserfiche and that started in 2010.

Intertrust picked Laserfiche because they were looking for something reliable and they were also looking for something it was a forefront of the market at the time. We started a pilot in the Netherlands for a small team, it was 25 people. We rolled out Laserfiche to them and then it went global after that. And they’re using it to scan documents, to retrieve documents, to make sure everything is there for the accountants so they can do the annual accounts. But it’s basically every kind of document you can think of emails, any loan agreements, any kind of documents in relation to like chartered accounts or anything like that. They’re all stored in those repositories and we even have support teams in Laserfiche as well. So, we have finance, we have H.R., we have compliance, all stored in Laserfiche.

We do have some savings that we’ve definitely made. I can give you one example; Real estate in Hong Kong is really expensive and we had an entire floor that was used for our business in Hong Kong. But then we launched Laserfiche and they did a job of back scanning all the documents into Laserfiche. And when I first went to the Hong Kong office as well it Was like many little caves of people surrounded by paper. I went back two years later to do an upgrade of Laserfiche for them and it was gone, all the paper was gone. Everything was inside Laserfiche and half of the floor had been sold back to another company but yet there was more people working for Intertrust in Hong Kong than before. So, it just shows you how much was saved due to that.

I think the searches are great. I think you can find anything at any point at anytime, I certainly can. The second one is the forums. I think Laserfiche forums is a really good way now of being able to actually get documents, whatever was in excel sheets before can now be put into a form and they don’t have to sign it. You don’t have to trek round looking for people to sign the documents or sign the forms, they can do it automatically. We’ve actually just started to put a client portal together. That’s going to be for all our clients and Laserfiche is going to be the forefront of that. So, all the documents are going to be stored into Laserfiche then pushed out into this client portal. So, then all our clients, doesn’t matter what jurisdiction they’re in, be it Luxembourg or Amsterdam we’ll be able to log into one place and find all their documents.

Laserfiche is an enterprise content management system not just a DMS, I think that’s what people need to recognize. The fact that we as a company, Intertrust, is pushing forward to make everything digital and I think with Laserfiche we are going to achieve that.

Jabal Omar Development Co.

By automating its processes and implementing e-forms, the real estate developer has simplified project documentation and approvals, saving both time and money.

MauBank Ltd

One of Mauritus’s leading banks enhanced the customer experience by transforming the account opening process using Laserfiche Forms and an automated workflow.

Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Group’s Digital Transformation

Laserfiche’s digital transformation model helps Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Group go above and beyond by digitizing and streamlining the claims process so customers have the confidence to do more.

Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Group Case Study

Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Group uses Laserfiche Forms to make the customer experience as seamless as possible.

D.L. Evans Automates Compliance and Records Management

SITUATION

• Needed an electronic document repository to store scanned documents
• Paper-driven operations were becoming overly expensive and time-intensive to manage

RESULTS

• Estimated $1 million in annual savings
• Enhanced employee experience
• Foundation for an optimized omnichannel experience for customers

D.L. Evans Bank is a century-old organization with over $3.2 billion in assets and dozens of branches across Idaho and Utah. As a true community bank, D.L. Evans offers a variety of personal, business and investment services while maintaining a simple mission: Help people.

To remain responsive to customer needs while addressing the banking industry’s ever-changing compliance requirements, D.L. Evans has built a strong digital ecosystem that includes Laserfiche as a key component. Laserfiche acts as the bank’s information backbone and main processing system, integrating with its core applications to support growth and scale. 

“We’re a $3.5 billion-in-assets institution today, up from $175 million around 25 years ago — a big part of that has been possible because of Laserfiche,” said Gerardo Munoz, D.L. Evans CIO.

“Over time, our use of Laserfiche evolved from document management to a business-critical system,” said Munoz. “Every process can be refined and automated, and Laserfiche was able to help with that.”

As a part of this evolution, the bank leverages Laserfiche’s integration tools to connect Laserfiche to other core systems including its eSignature application, core banking software, CRM and loan origination program. Munoz and his team even use Laserfiche Connector as an integration tool to bridge applications for operations that do not use Laserfiche at all.

“Our Laserfiche repository has over 80 million documents in it, so it’s as critical to us as our core banking system,” Munoz said. “Laserfiche is the second-most critical application that we use in our institution.”

Beyond the time and cost efficiency gains, D.L. Evans counts Laserfiche as a trusted system due to its robust records management capabilities. As a financial institution, the can’t afford to make mistakes with its record management procedures, which are heavily regulated by FDIC rules.

Laserfiche has helped minimize FDIC violations by standardizing how records are kept and updated; for example, retention rules notify compliance officers when a policy document needs to be updated and versioning enables policy reviewers to know if they are working with the most up to date copy of a document.

Auditing has also been streamlined. Whenever the FDIC requests a records audit, D.L. Evans’ team is able to promptly retrieve and present the electronic documents and files in question. “Laserfiche has brought audit time down from four weeks to two,” explains Munoz. “This is actually a bigger improvement than it sounds because as we’ve grown, we now have twice as many loans to audit.”

Transforming the Employee Experience

In addition to making information easier to access, Laserfiche has enhanced the employee experience by standardizing and automating review and approval. Furthermore, integrations eliminate much of the manual data entry and application switching that waste employee time and cognitive energy.

“Just about every process needs some level of automation. The fact that automation can standardize procedures and processes is a major reason to do it. Using Laserfiche to do that has helped us save time and money, as well as prevent a lot of mistakes.” — Gerardo Munoz, D.L. Evans CIO

The bank recently reimagined the loan process, starting with vehicular loans, using Laserfiche. The integration between Laserfiche and Meridian — the bank’s loan origination program — allows many of the previously manual tasks associated with loans to be entirely managed through a Laserfiche form and automated business process. 

A Laserfiche form reads information directly from the loan application program and creates the loan packet, routes it through approvals and files everything in a centralized location.

This process also leverages a Laserfiche-DocuSign integration, enabling customers to submit signed documents that are automatically filed in the correct folder in Laserfiche, eliminating that task for loan officers.

“Rather than hire more loan processors, we are trying to automate the process so we can be more proactive,” Munoz said. “It also gives our loan officers better visibility and trackability into all activities.”

Similar automations are used to create new accounts, where information gathering and routing is managed by Laserfiche. As a result, bank employees can spend more time on the activities that require a human touch, such as customer service.

Another process that sounds deceptively quick and easy, but in reality can require multiple manual steps, is that of replacing a lost or stolen credit card. To accelerate these activities, the bank built a solution on an integration between Laserfiche and its CRM, 360 View. This enables representatives to easily create a service ticket in the CRM to start the replacement process for a customer. When a customer reports a lost or stolen credit card, a representative uses Laserfiche to automatically populate the service ticket with the customer’s information and then route the ticket to the appropriate reviewers and approvers. The improvement has reduced processing time by 66% — from six weeks to two weeks.

Laserfiche has also played an important role in mergers, as the bank is able to easily bring documents and data into their systems from acquired organizations. In one merger, Munoz explained, the bank avoided a $50,000 cost and monthslong wait to have a professional services firm convert and import documents.

“It took me two hours to write a workflow and the documents were converted in a week,” he said.

A True Community Bank

While most of the bank’s Laserfiche initiatives are considered back-office solutions, D.L. Evans customers directly benefit from the increased efficiency. “Laserfiche helps us be more productive and provide faster responses to our customers,” Munoz said.

The customer experience continues to be a guiding light for the D.L. Evans team, which was all-hands-on-deck during the COVID-19 pandemic. The bank’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan process was developed over a weekend, and staff — including the entire executive team — were trained on how to process PPP loans in a matter of hours.

“We even had our CEO processing PPP loans,” Munoz said. “Everything worked seamlessly and was processed through the proper channels. Afterward, all the documentation was there, and customers were satisfied.”

Thanks to the IT team’s quick response with Laserfiche and the entire staff’s commitment, D.L. Evans was the largest PPP provider in the state of Idaho.

Today, the bank provides other forms of community service, including its scholarship program. Students can submit a Laserfiche form for D.L. Evans’s Education Pays program — a drawing which rewards high-performing students with laptops — or its Scholarship Program, which awards thousands of dollars each year to high school seniors to attend any accredited college, university or trade school in the U.S.

Looking to the future, D.L. Evans is committed to creating a more cohesive, omnichannel experience for its customers. Laserfiche initiatives on the horizon include creating a self-service customer portal of Laserfiche Forms, enabling quicker and easier, 24/7 access to various services.

“All things considered, Laserfiche saves us about $1 million every year since we’ve implemented it,” says Munoz. “Laserfiche has never been one of those products that just sits on the shelf and doesn’t get used.”

Click here to learn how your financial firm can automate records management and compliance.

Growing Bank Expedites Loan Application Processing in 20-Plus Branches

SITUATION

• A growing bank’s acquisitions led to many ways of managing documents.
• Locating missing information resulted in wasted time.

SOLUTION

• Laserfiche helped to centralize information and save time searching for documents.
• Laserfiche automated loan applications eliminated repetitive tasks and accelerated the process.
• Bank employees have immediate document access from any of the bank’s branches.

For this bank, growing from a startup with less than 10 employees to a bank with multiple acquisitions and 250 staff came with a challenge.

“The banks we bought all had different ways of managing documents — some of them used paper files, while others had software in place,” said one of the bank’s assistant vice presidents. “As a result, we spent a lot of time calling other branches to locate missing information.”

Having disparate approaches was a liability to bank operations and client service. New account applications had to be mailed or faxed from branch offices to the main office, resulting in lost documents — and wasted time.

“We wanted a centralized system to house our information,” the AVP said. “We needed something that would be fully functional across all departments and locations.”

The organization found Laserfiche document management software. “We chose Laserfiche for its flexibility. We like that the system can be used by all our employees while still being customized to fit specific departmental needs.”

Streamling Loan Application and Approval Paperwork

“Our top goal was that loan application processing or opening a new account wouldn’t take forever,” said the AVP.

Using Laserfiche, the bank automated the processing of new accounts and loans:
  • The customer fills out and submits new account paperwork, which can include signature cards, credit card applications and online banking enrollment forms.
  • A personal banker scans the documents into Laserfiche.
  • A customer data specialist enters important document metadata into Laserfiche, such as name, account number and Tax ID.
  • Laserfiche automatically routes the documents to the appropriate department for review and approval.
  • The department marks the document as approved, rejected or still in process, and the customer receives notification of the decision.

Growing Bank Expedites Loan

“This process saves time on administrative tasks and provides immediate document access from any of the bank’s branches. For example, if a customer questions a check, the signature card can quickly be found in Laserfiche and a copy of the signature can be instantly retrieved for verification.

“Every department wants Laserfiche,” the AVP added. “They all have different ideas about what they want to do with Laserfiche.”

How Laserfiche ECM Helps Financial Advisors Compete with Robo-Advisors

Today, financial advisors operate in a far more competitive landscape than in years past. Robo-advisors and other technology-driven changes are impacting the traditional practices of advisors, creating urgency to adopt the latest industry innovations.

Here are three factors that are contributing to the industry’s shifting landscape and how enterprise content management (ECM) systems helps financial advisors adapt to them.

Robo-advisors

The term, “robo-advisor” refers to algorithmic technology that is helping investors—particularly beginning investors with smaller portfolios—cost-effectively make more informed financial decisions.

One of the ways traditional advisors can compete with robo-advisors is through software integration. When they integrate primary applications like a customer relationship management (CRM) and ECM system, advisors can quickly collect business-critical data and gain insight into their organization’s processes.

As robo-advisors enter the wealth management space, advisors must re-think their approach to technology in order to increase productivity and remain competitive.

RIA Growth Curve

The number of registered investment advisors (RIAs) has grown steadily in recent years and is expected to reach 28% of market share by 2018. This figure has grown from just 11.9% in 2013. In fact, research group Cerulli Associates recently identified RIAs as the fastest growing segment of the financial advisor market.

With many new practices entering the industry, it is crucial for advisors to focus on establishing competitive differentiators. ECM systems gives advisors a comparative advantage by streamlining business processes that can take their competitors longer to complete. For example, some ECM systems can:
  • Auto-populate electronic forms, reducing the processing time and errors of manual data entry
  • Automate compliance review and approval processes, allowing advisors to quickly book new trades
  • Email electronic forms to account holders for e-signatures, saving significant document turnaround time

Compliance

With a renewed focus on compliance from regulators, advisors can expect more frequent and in-depth audits than ever before. Top advisors are using ECM systems to prepare their firms for strict compliance regulations.

When advisors automate business processes like new account opening, blotter submissions and trade approvals, some ECM systems record an audit history of every action that takes place. This allows RIAs to easily discover documents requested during an audit.

Advisors can also use ECM systems to manage client records by automatically assigning retention and destruction dates based on their records management requirements. Girard Securities—a San Diego-based RIA—uses Laserfiche ECM to improve productivity and compliance around its blotter process:
 

The combination of robo-advisors, new competitors and stricter compliance makes for a tipping point in the wealth management industry. The advisors that come out on top will be defined by how they streamline their operations with technology.

Apps Advisers Need to Use

In this 4-minute Wall Street Journal video, Joel Bruckenstein, founder of Technology Tools for Today, outlines a few mobile apps that he recommends for financial advisors, including Laserfiche.

Watch the video now!