nbkc bank Improves Approval Efficiency by 40%
nbkc bank makes banking what it should be: simple and transparent for all the services- checking, savings, business accounts, loans and more. Since 2018, nbkc bank has been leveraging fintech partnerships to help people save and move money- whenever and wherever they are.
In January 2021, the team at nbkc recognized that their existing processes for managing fintech partners lacked efficiency and visibility across their teams. As a full-service bank conscious of the rapidly changing technology and regulations around fintech, nbkc was aware that manually monitoring marketing and other materials created by their fintech partners was insufficient and not scalable. The lack of visibility concerning when and where approvals were taking place, as well as limited insights into the records being managed, created additional work during review.
Until that point, back and forth communication with partners, including approvals, customer complaints, and issues were all handled via email. This disjointed communication, alongside multiple excel documents, not only posed a challenge in managing their partners, but also created friction when providing information to regulators.
During the process of scaling their fintech partnerships, nbkc decided to look for a digital solution to address these challenges. They evaluated a number of potential compliance technology tools, but all platforms lacked any collaborative capabilities required to successfully manage their programs. Ultimately, nbkc was not comfortable onboarding partners to these other third party platforms; until they discovered Themis.
nbkc adopted several modules and workflows within the Themis platform to increase their efficiency and alleviate confusion across teams. The results were more than the team expected and also provided partners with an easy way to upload information in a single repository.
By leveraging the Marketing module to review, provide feedback, and approve all of their marketing material, the team reduces unnecessary back and forth, and understands clearly who is responsible for the next action. This simple efficiency allows the team to accelerate approvals. Since launch, the nbkc team has reviewed over 500 pieces of marketing material - whether that is TikTok, email marketing, Facebook Ads, or partners’ corporate website. In addition to workflow improvements, with permanent access to each record's comment history, approval information, and audit trail, nbkc can easily share with regulators at a moment’s notice.
The nbkc team also leverages the Complaints module to easily collect and review any customer complaints their fintech partners need to surface. The Complaints module provides nbkc with a centralized workflow solution to track, manage, and communicate complaints from multiple sources and ensure they are handled in a timely manner. nbkc’s partners upload their complaints directly to Themis, select reviewers and approvers, and the nbkc team can acknowledge and take action directly in the platform on any issues that arise.
nbkc also utilizes the Issue Management module as part of their fintech management program. With Issue Management, nbkc tracks and remediates issues that are discovered by the team directly, or by their fintech partners. These collaborative workspaces allow nbkc to push issues directly to their partners so the partners can address any necessary steps to resolve the issue. These steps are managed through action plans, directly stored within an Issue Management record, and are easily tracked by the issue owner.
By leveraging Themis, the team at nbkc has seen considerable efficiency gains in their approval workflows and have accomplished their goal of unifying communication with their fintech partners. The Themis platform has been so successful for the team at nbkc that they have reduced the necessary headcount on the approval and communication process by 50% and reduced the turnaround times for approvals by 40%!
Collaborate on sales material between departments and provide real-time comments with an easy to use interface.
Track complaints from multiple sources centrally to make sure complaints are handled in a timely manner.
Track company wide issues in a single repository to make better strategy decisions.
