Overview

The proliferation of payments rails, applications, and channels and with it, the need to provide new customer touchpoints, tools, and integrated capabilities, is accelerating. Over the past few years, the payments ecosystem has expanded with capabilities such as Real-Time Payments, Same Day ACH, P2P applications such as Zelle and Venmo, digital wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Wallet, Card Association Real Time Payments such as Visa Direct and Mastercard Send, and FinTechs such as Dwollla ACH. Further, standards such as ISO20022, Swift GPI, SEPA and Open Banking are more important than ever.

Established in 1981, Infosys is an NYSE-listed global consulting and IT services company with more than 250,000 employees. The company was the first from India to be listed on the NASDAQ exchange.

Bank of the West is an American banking institution headquartered in San Francisco, California. It has more than 600 branches and offices across the Midwest and Western United States and is a subsidiary of the French multinational banking corporation BNP Paribas.

Bank of the West’s legacy systems could not meet growing demands and requirements. Their investment in a new digital experience for corporate and business payments and information reporting and in an enterprise payments capability was intended to position the bank to compete in the future and respond to the rapidly changing market and environment.

Implementation Process

The project rolled out in phases with the first digital channels functionality in Q4 2019. Subsequently, the bank carried out the migration of customers to the new digital channels. UAT was also carried out for a significant release of functionality in Q4 2020.

Implementation of Infosys Finacle Digital Channel Suite and Enterprise Payments put into place the infrastructure that enabled an enhanced, digital customer experience. Specific building blocks included:

• Enhanced Security
• Enhanced User Interface
• Host-to-Host and Exposed Services (API’s) – Enterprise Payments
• Client Administration and Client Self Service
• Personalized Alerts, Notification and Reporting
• Advanced Payments – RTP, Zelle and beyond

 Benefits Achieved

Key benefits of the project include:

• Enhanced Security Features: The Bank of the West/Finacle partnership prioritized enhancing the safety and security of doing business across the bank’s digital channels. The solution expanded the number of events and transactions that were screened in real time thought RSA and IRIS from just a handful to over 150 for fraud detection, authentication, authorization, and other functions. In addition, client control over user access to process workflows adds an additional layer of security.
• Enhanced User Interface: The digital experience provided intuitive designs featuring personalized dashboards with a 360-degree view of customer information and transactions, personalization of the user’s workspace including the ability to store report and file formats, the ability to save and go (a function that allows the user to start a transaction, save it partially done and pick it up again later) and to schedule future and recurring transactions. The new digital channel allowed users to accomplish the same tasks with up to 70% fewer “clicks”, which made a huge difference in customer experience.
• Host-to-Host and Exposed Services (APIs): The solution allowed users to submit payments files directly to the Enterprise Payments Hub and access their payments information through an integrated dashboard on the digital banking suite where they can view, search, and produce reports which is something that H2H users did not have access to in the past. Web service APIs are exposed to clients who want to connect their systems directly with Enterprise Payments. These services include Client Onboarding and Initiate Payment Debit/Credit.
• Client Administration and Client Self Service: The solution introduced client administrators for all administrative functions such as creating/removing users, access rights and assigning user workflows. It took it a step beyond by allowing client administrators the ability to create/modify user workflows and monitor user activity themselves. Users could manage their own accounts including requesting unlocks and managing passwords autonomously.
• Personalized Alerts, Notifications and Reporting: The solution included both personalized alerts/notifications and mandatory system alerts/notifications satisfying both needs. For the individual user, it allows them to configure their own notifications, such as the clearing of a transaction or the occurrence of an event or a needed action on their part while preserving the need for administrative notifications for things like compliance, breech of limits or other error conditions.
• Advanced Payments: The Enterprise Payments Hub could also parse and send payments along the appropriate rail without further customer intervention. The system also has dedicated screens available for accessing payment file information including the ability to search and view transactions.

Other benefits include:

• 75% reduction in H2H client onboarding time
• Strong increase in volume of real-time payment transactions 

Conclusion

Through this implementation, Bank of the West was able to strive toward meeting customer demand across digital channels across all segments, corporate/commercial, business banking and small businesses.

Key Facts

• Vendor: Infosys Finacle
• Headquarters: India
• Founded: 1999
• Bank/FI: Bank of the West BNP Paribas