Pegasystems Inc, a specialist in rules-driven business process management software, today announced the availability of PegaINTEGRATED INVESTIGATIONS 3.2, a suite of software designed to help financial institutions streamline the processing of payment, securities and treasury investigations and exceptions across the enterprise.
“By integrating payment, securities and treasury investigations processing in one platform, banks can reduce the duplication of tasks associated with resolving errors,” explains Pegasystems. “Additional features in this release include improved fulfillment capabilities that enable automated processing of financial adjustments, as well as the management of inter-bank compensation payables and receivables. A standard database schema for archived transaction data is also now available for use by banks that do not have an existing data warehouse.”
“As US payments transition from paper-based to electronic payments, banks must implement real time processing systems,” says Robert Hunt, senior analyst, TowerGroup. “Further, it is critical that financial institutions automate workflow processes in order to manage, process, and resolve exception conditions and customer inquiries in a timely manner.”
PegaINTEGRATED INVESTIGATIONS 3.2 automates routine processes associated with payments, securities and treasury inquiries, including the receipt, delivery and processing of incoming messages, as well as the sending of outbound correspondence using SWIFT, Fed Wire and other industry formats. It provides the user with a single view of customer information that extends across legacy systems and databases – providing fast and efficient resolution of investigations and helping to reduce operating costs. Customers can also submit inquiries and review the status of investigations through Web self-service, which helps improve customer satisfaction and retention.
Pegasystems also announced today that Rabobank, headquartered in Utrecht, Netherlands, is deploying PegaINTEGRATED INVESTIGATIONS for Payments, part of the PegaINTEGRATED INVESTIGATIONS 3.2 software suite, across its national and international branch network. The new software allows Rabobank’s correspondent banks and corporate customers to quickly and easily check the status of transactions via the Web.
“With PegaINTEGRATED INVESTIGATIONS for Payments, our international banking network can track and trace investigations independently, so they no longer have to contact our investigators for assistance. There has been an 80% drop in the number of phone calls alone, which has considerably raised our productivity levels and reduced costs at the national, international and branch levels,” says Jaap Van Caspel, vice president of international payment services, Rabobank. “Additionally, correspondent banks working with us have access to the same Web self-service functionality as international branches, and we plan to roll this service out to our full network of 300 international correspondent banks in the near future.”
“PegaINTEGRATED INVESTIGATIONS 3.2 is a powerful solution for the financial services industry because it helps enable organisations to utilise best practices to improve the way in which they provide services to customers,” said Andy Elliott, director of product management, Commercial Banking, Pegasystems. “In a market where costs continue to come under scrutiny, and the ability to quantify and manage risk is extremely important, companies are looking for solutions that deliver rapid return on investment (ROI).”
Six of the top 10 global banks have implemented Pegasystems’ investigations software. *
The latest version of PegaINTEGRATED INVESTIGATIONS adds financial adjustment and compensation functionality, as well as a standard database schema that can be used to store transaction data if an organisation does not already have a data warehouse. The new financial adjustment fulfilment module permits payments made incorrectly to be automatically adjusted, eliminating the need for an operator to log on to the accounting system and manually process the adjustment. This can result in faster processing of transactions and fewer operational errors. The improved compensation functionality also enables domestic and foreign currency interest claims to be calculated, tracked and settled automatically, helping to both maximise the collection of interest and minimise operator intervention and risk.
PegaINTEGRATED INVESTIGATIONS 3.2 provides multi-entity support, enabling it to be used by an outsourcing company to support multiple financial organisations on a single Pegasystems solution via an ASP model.
Additionally, the consolidated management information that is a by-product of the common platform enables both customer and operational risk reporting across business and geographic lines. PegaINTEGRATED INVESTIGATIONS 3.2 facilitates a high percentage of straight through processing, which also helps banks to improve workforce productivity and reduce operating costs. The software also automates business processes, so that training of customer service representatives, for example, is simplified – helping to create further cost savings for financial institutions.