How can Banks Increase Regulatory Compliance by Going Paperless?

How can Banks Increase Regulatory Compliance by Going Paperless?

By Annemaria Duran (14 years in the Banking and Financial Industry)

Trying to be Compliant With Paper Records

If you’ve worked for a Bank for more than a few months, chances are, you’ve been through an audit. You know the drill. 1-2 days of warning, followed by a hectic scramble to clean your files, desk, and office and to make sure that everyone has the right keys to the filing cabinets! Have you shredded all the documents that should have been destroyed? Do you have sticky notes with client information on your desk? Are all the office and cabinet keys accounted for and the key logs up to date?

Then the auditor comes and you spend two days attempting to get some work done, but find yourself critically handicapped by regulations. You run to the filing cabinet numerous times only to remember that you did lock it (like you should have) but you have to run back and get the key again. You provide the files to the auditor, and sit on needles hoping that you didn’t accidentally leave a document in the file that should have already been shredded according to retention guidelines.

It’s so much work!! Isn’t there an easier way to not loose so many full days of productive work every time you have to prepare for an audit?

Secure Online Storage Allows Saves Time and Money

Or even worse, what if you don’t pass and you have to face the consequences. Minor consequences result in additional time spent in training, possibly probation, and can even result in severe disciplinary action. If it’s an external audit, your institution might be subject to fines, sanctions and reputation risk.

What if audits could be a breeze? What if you didn’t have to spend so much time preparing? What if your normal daily habits complied seamlessly with the regulations?

Follow Regulations Naturally Without Disrupting Workflows Through Electronic Management

Audits come in two varieties: Internal Audits and External (Government Agency) audits. Internal Audits are more common and more preferred by employees. For those “lucky” enough to be caught in an external audit, the stress alone is often enough to make them begin questioning if it’s worth the stress.

It is common knowledge that in a paper environment 100% compliance 100% of the time is a full time job in itself, and often is not even impossible. Most institutions train employees and hope that for the few days the auditor visits, that the employee can remember to lock the screen on their workstations, keep the filing cabinets locked during the day (and not just at night), and immediately shred or lock up paper when they step away from their desks. Yet, all too often this does not happen.

The best way for a bank to lock down their documents is to go paperless. By converting from a physical filing cabinet to an electronic one, employees can maintain a “lock” on the filing cabinet. Paper does not get left unattended on the desk, allowing for potential compromise of sensitive information, and documents are locked down from employee snooping based on job/role function and a ‘need to know’ basis. This secures data from internal and external risk.

One of the most innovative forces in document management, eFileCabinet, incorporates these, and many more compliance tools into its software, making compliance for banks more attainable and easy than ever before.
There are many ways that eFileCabinet combines ‘ease of workflow’ and compliance for financial institutions:

  • Role Based Security in the filing cabinet: This means that each employee can only access the documents that are pertinent to their job function. No more checking the key logs and dedicating entire cabinets for a few sensitive documents.
  • Audit Tracking: Everything that is even touched or looked at in the filing cabinet is tracked in an un-editable trail.
  • Encryption for all of your data: Even if you chose an on premise solution, all of the documents and data stored in eFileCabinet is encrypted at 256bit encryption. This means that NO ONE without the proper authority can access any of your documents. If you chose the cloud based solution, the data is encrypted both in transit and at rest so that your data is secure at all times!

    • Want to know how safe 256bit encryption is? It is thousand times more secure than roughly ½ of all the banking websites in the United States! That’s secure!!

  • Automated Retention: Lock down the documents that you need to permanently keep for SEC compliance and manage the destruction timelines automatically for the documents that you need to destroy according to guidelines. Save your employees hours of time a week!
  • Auditor access: Allows for View-Only access to your filing cabinet. Plus, you can specify specific files to share with your auditor so you don’t “accidentally” share the entire cabinet!

    • Don’t wait another day to bring your institution into better compliance! Fill out the form to the right of your screen right now!