“Knock Knock, it’s the 4th Quarter”
October 1st can be a reality check and a wake-up call for many Financial Services professionals. Whether you’re in banking, wealth management, insurance, credit, mortgage, or lending, you’re probably all too familiar with that under-the-gun feeling of last-minute deadlines and data crunching.
“Are we on track to meet our goals? Are we over or under our budget? Do we have any wiggle room? Can we implement any solutions or shortcuts to help us keep momentum going?” If these questions sound familiar and never-ending projects are weighing you down, it might be time to wipe your desk clean and find out how to clean up your data management.
Losing the Paper Weight
Year-end tax planning got you buried under piles of records? Inundated by college funding applications? What about retirement plan check-ups, insurance reviews, succession planning, and policy renewals? Record retention doesn’t have to be a burden.
Everything that happens in the first several months of the year has a way of accumulating and slowing down projects that might require time and money. The approaching holidays leave even less time than normal to get things done by year-end.
Making sure your institution is compliant with books & records requirements, ensuring disaster recovery methods are in place, increasing efficiency, improving customer service, and streamlining processes and information retrieval are all areas of scrutiny moving from Q4 to Q1.
If this isn’t the kind of paper weighing you down, we need to talk
In the aggressive world of finance, success is measured by balancing profitability expectations with operational efficiency, reduced costs, and improved customer service. Compound these challenges with regulatory compliance requirements and budget headaches, and you risk being out-of-date and inefficient. Q4 is the time for every organization to implement top-notch solutions.
Top 10 Ways the Financial Services Industry Can Embrace CTI’s Document Management Solutions:
- Regulatory adherence to the PATRIOT Act, Graham-Leach-Bliley, Sarbanes-Oxley, FRCP, and other laws as well as broker-dealer and FINRA compliance
- Audit trail of all documents to provide accountability
- Improve customer relationships through more effective and prompt service
- Manage customer information with a single, centralized repository
- Immediate ROI through rapid installation and improved profitability on banking services
- Eliminate paper handling costs, document loss, storage and security nightmares, and associated contingent liabilities
- Instant information retrieval and improved security
- Disaster recovery and reliable digital archiving and backup
- Increased administrative efficiency
- Improved customer satisfaction, retention and growth without bringing on more staff
Compliance versus Efficiency
Federal regulations require customer records to be held in good order for several years, sometimes even after the client relationship is terminated, in the case of certain industries. If you aren’t paperless, talk to us about back-file conversion today and start the new year with empty filing cabinets!
Did you know that even licensed bank branch employees are not permitted to view, handle, or access client’s investment-related records? Only fingerprinted broker-dealer associated persons should be involved with these private and sensitive documents. Is your office non-compliant in this area? Are you in need of a secure, permissions-based software solution?
Paper applications and data entry slow down your reps and sales assistants. Would your firm benefit from digitized, pre-populated applications in PDF format with e-signature capabilities that are retrievable and can be uploaded into a customer database?