How digital transformation is revolutionising client lifecycle management in the Middle East

Has the pace with which financial institutions in the UAE adopted digital transformation been on par with other mature markets worldwide?
Covid has forced many banks in UAE to radically transform how they serve customers with branches closed and staff working from home. They quickly identified the need to offer their clients an end-to-end remote digital experience. While several regional banks offer retail clients an overall good experience, the same can’t be said for small business and corporate clients, where the time to onboard them remains a significant challenge.

There is also a growing focus on regulation and the cost of compliance in the region and this has created an unprecedented demand for fintech and regulation technology. Many go through the internal debate to build or buy, but more of them realise that “future proofing” their institution cannot be easily achieved internally.

Why would banks choose Fenergo over an internally built solution?
Fenergo is the leading provider of digital transformation, customer journey and client lifecycle management (CLM) solutions for financial institutions. Our software digitally transforms and streamlines end-to-end CLM processes —from regulatory onboarding, data integration, client and counterparty data management, client lifecycle reviews and remediation, all the way to client offboarding.

When banks buy Fenergo, they are buying into our in-depth financial services and regulatory expertise and out-of-the-box rules engine. All of this future-proofs financial institutions against evolving Know Your Customer (KYC), Anti-Money-Laundering (AML), tax and OTC derivatives-based regulations across over 120 jurisdictions.

They buy into our expertise developed and honed over 13 years and our 80+ bank implementations, working with banks of every size across the world. We can deliver 82 per cent faster onboarding for even the most complex onboarding cases by streamlining and automating the end-to-end client lifecycle process.

How does Fenergo’s services ensure local regulatory compliance? 
Fenergo supports financial institutions around the world with technology solutions that meet their specific technology and regulatory requirements. In the GCC market specifically, we support Bahrain’s Electronic Network for Financial Transactions (BENEFIT) with a blockchain-integrated Know Your Customer (KYC) utility.

Financial institutions that subscribe to BENEFIT can instantly complete KYC and AML compliance procedures when onboarding new individual and corporate customers through the Fenergo-powered KYC hub and rules engine utilising blockchain. By centralising customer data, financial institutions to onboard new customers and products swiftly and seamlessly, without the need to perform an outreach to collect information. This eliminates manual processes, reduces costs and improves operational efficiencies, ultimately delivering much better customer experiences.

What is the USP of Fenergo and what gives it an edge over the competition?
The key thing that separates Fenergo from anyone else in the industry is our community-driven solutions. Fenergo’s global family of clients feed directly into our product and regulatory roadmaps, making sure that the product develops in line with their strategic focus.

Our out-of-the-box regulatory content is unparalleled, as is our client data master, which automates data capture from many data providers, to create a 360-client view, delivering a digital, frictionless customer journey. This is achieved through Fenergo’s integration with front to back office systems including Salesforce at the front end and data, screening, and KYC data providers such as Refinitiv at the middle office. This front-to-back integration ensures a seamless, digital client journey regardless of what journey they are on (opening a new account, requesting a new product, undergoing a regular KYC review).

What gives Fenergo its true competitive edge is the intelligent regulatory rules engine, which automates compliance throughout the client lifecycle. This enables firms to achieve up to an 80 per cent reduction in regulatory change management costs.

Anglo-Gulf Trade Bank recently became a client of Fenergo. What is the scope of that partnership?
AGTB aims to become the first digital bank servicing the sector, providing trade clients with unprecedented client experiences. Fenergo’s API-first and cloud-based CLM solutions will provide AGTB with a single client view across all departments, jurisdictions and products, while expediting KYC and AML processes and time to revenue. Fenergo CLM enables AGTB to assess and mitigate risk more effectively, empowering the bank to deliver a more integrated, real-time offering to its clients.

What are some of the business expansion plans that Fenergo has in the pipeline for 2021?
In 2021, Fenergo will announce the launch of a new SaaS-based, cloud-native Client Lifecycle Management solution, tailored specifically for the needs of commercial and business banks in the Middle East and beyond. The new solution will enable financial services firms to quickly be up and running with a digital CLM system so that they can begin to digitally onboard clients faster and meet regulatory requirements.

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