Skip to content
Get in touch

From Compliance Risk To Cost Savings for a Leading Digital Bank

AdobeStock_385654899 (1)

Industry

Financial Services

Challenge

Improve critical aspects of their core financial crime capabilities, particularly around transaction monitoring and counter-fraud measures.

Results

Fraud prevention, regulatory compliance, operational efficiency and cost reduction.

c£5M
Annual Cost Savings
c58K
False positives identified
1000s
Additional man-hours of efficiency measures identified
AdobeStock_569504463

Background

Our client was established in 2014 as one of the pioneering digital challenger banks in the UK. Operating entirely as a virtual business without physical branches, they leveraged modern technology to offer both personal and business banking solutions, providing customers with innovative, user-friendly current and business accounts.

For the year to March 2024, the client posted profits of c £300m, with deposits of c£11 billion, from just over 4 million customers, and over 3000 staff. The client and Brighter had not previously worked together before the engagement that ran from November 2023 through to October 2024.

During 2023/4, the client was subject to enhanced regulatory scrutiny, around their financial crime systems and controls. Brighter was engaged to provide Subject Matter Expertise to support the client as they sought to improve critical aspects of their core financial crime capabilities, particularly around transaction monitoring and counter-fraud measures.

Project Scope and Objectives

The client was seeking innovative solutions delivered at pace, aligned with their core competencies and collaborative working style. Their goal was to maintain a customer-centric approach to banking solutions while ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements. Additionally, they aimed to enhance their in-house teams by gaining increased knowledge and implementing fit-for-purpose tools, including improved management information (MI) systems.

Challenges

The specific challenges that the client was facing centred on ensuring that they could evolve their financial crime systems to be properly compliant without undermining their customer service offering in the banking space.

The client did not have the SME expertise in-house, and Brighter was able to provide that in-depth capability for the client at pace, with the right skills and approach needed, and help them develop the right tools and capability.

The financial crime area continues to evolve at pace, and the client chose to deploy our expertise in the timeframe required to meet regulatory expectations. This included the design and specification for the Transaction Monitoring capability, and then backfill with internal resources over time with knowledge transfer occurring from the Brighter SME’s to internal teams. Brighter was able to provide that in-depth capability for the Client swiftly, with the right skills and approach needed.

Solution

Brighter supported the client to ensure that their Transaction Monitoring capability was upgraded to meet the regulatory requirements. As part of the service provided, Brighter identified material inefficiencies in the client processes, which enabled the client to achieve significant cost savings as well as the intended regulatory outcomes.

Approach

Brighter deployed specialist SME’s with the right knowledge, experience and capability to lead the client requirements around the design and build of the enhancements needed to support
a fit-for-purpose Transaction Monitoring capability. We also provided focused attention on the client’s fraud prevention approach, including enhancing their fraud prevention tools.

Results

Quantitative

  • Identified c28,000 false positives per annum that could be removed from the workflow during July, on top of the c36,000 identified in June. This translated to a monthly cost saving for July of £266,000 and £343,000 for June and will be an ongoing saving each month moving forward.
  • Identified thousands of additional man-hours of efficiency measures that could be implemented into the live processes.
  • Total expected annualised cost savings identified from our work equates to c£5m per annum, vs a total spend of c£550k.

Qualitative

  • Provided regulatory certainty for the Transaction Monitoring processes, giving confidence to the client and the FCA, which reduced reputational risk, and addressed some key concerns from previous failures that resulted in the £29m fine from the FCA issued in Q4 2024.

 

Back to view all case studies

Ready to enhance your organisation’s capabilities and navigate complex challenges with confidence?

Get in touch