The client
A regional bank with about 200 branches in 6 states. Its core banking runs on FIS, its ledger on Oracle Fusion, and its cases in ServiceNow. Reconciliations are certified in BlackLine, and the teams work in Microsoft Teams.
The engagement
The chief operating officer and the controller sponsored one engagement across payments operations and the controller's team, because the two teams work the same items. Six workflows were in scope:
- Payment exceptions and returns: 14,000 a month, worked by 44 analysts.
- Card and ACH dispute claims: 9,500 a month, worked by 86 analysts against legal deadlines.
- Nostro reconciliation: 23 accounts the bank holds at other banks, in 9 currencies.
- Suspense clearing: about 1,900 items older than 30 days at each month end.
- Ledger reconciliations: about 1,300 a month.
- Regulatory reporting: the quarterly Call Report and FR Y-9C.
What the pilot found
Four forward-deployed engineers ran a 4-week pilot. They studied the bank's records, procedures, and policies. They also interviewed the analysts and the controller's team. The exceptions process ran 15 steps with 5 rework loops. The written procedure described 11 steps and 2 loops.
- Suspense accounts were the real queue. An exception that could not clear the same day went to 1 of 11 suspense accounts, and no document said which team owned which account. The records showed it.
- Corrections to a customer's account did not always stick, so 9% of ACH returns repeated a mistake already on file.
- 27% of temporary credits on lost disputes were never reversed, so the bank absorbed the loss.
- A second review ran on every item over $25,000. The written policy sets that limit at $250,000.
The budget priced an exception at $12, the first touch only. Counting every touch, it cost $41. Late filing added losses: 2.8% of returns went out after the deadline.
The redesign
Payment exceptions were the focus, because every exception not cleared the same day lands in suspense for the controller's team. The process now runs on 5 agents with 3 decisions left to people. Before an analyst sees an exception, an agent gathers the original payment, the customer's history, and any earlier corrections. An exception that cannot clear the same day goes to suspense with a named owner. About 2,700 exceptions a month still reach an analyst. The auto-cleared rate below counts exceptions resolved with no human correction. The $16 counts every remaining touch, plus the agents' own running cost.
Before15 steps, 5 loops
4.5 days
After6 steps, 3 human decisions, 1 loop
1.5 days
- Manual step
- Agent step
- Person decides
- Rework loop
Process steps
- Before
- 15
- After
- 6
- Change
- 60% fewer
Average resolution time
- Before
- 4.5 days
- After
- 1.5 days
- Change
- 67% shorter
Exception loops
- Before
- 5
- After
- 1
- Change
- 80% fewer
Auto-cleared rate
- Before
- 22%
- After
- 81%
- Change
- +59 pts
Returns filed after the deadline
- Before
- 2.8%
- After
- 0.3%
- Change
- 89% fewer
Cost per exception
- Before
- $41
- After
- $16
- Change
- 61% lower
| Before | After | Change | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Process steps | 15 | 6 | 60% fewer |
| Average resolution time | 4.5 days | 1.5 days | 67% shorter |
| Exception loops | 5 | 1 | 80% fewer |
| Auto-cleared rate | 22% | 81% | +59 pts |
| Returns filed after the deadline | 2.8% | 0.3% | 89% fewer |
| Cost per exception | $41 | $16 | 61% lower |
4 weeks of discovery, then 4 weeks of deployment
- Weeks 1 to 4, discovery: the pilot above maps the process, interviews the team, and sets the baseline for every figure on this page.
- Week 5, build: the agents are built on the redesigned process and the suspense account map.
- Week 6, shadow: the agents work live exceptions with read-only access, and their answers are compared with the analysts'.
- Week 7, validate: the agents are tested on 6 months of past exceptions, and payments operations, the controller, and model risk sign off.
- Week 8, deploy: live in FIS, Oracle Fusion, and ServiceNow, with every action logged.
- From week 8, train: the engineers stay on site to train the teams whose work changed. Disputes, reconciliations, and regulatory reporting follow, 4 weeks each.
What the agent does
- When a customer asks the bank to recall a wire, the request goes to the agent.
- The agent reads the original payment, the customer's instruction, and the receiving bank's status.
- It drafts the response and the note to the customer, then stops.
- An analyst approves it in Teams. The case closes, and the entry posts to the right ledger account, so nothing waits in suspense.
Results
Items older than 30 days in suspense fell from about 1,900 to about 400, and each now has an owner. Dispute claims close in 19 days on average instead of 38, and unreversed temporary credits fell from 27% to 2%. Ledger reconciliations are certified by day 4 instead of day 9, and the Call Report takes 10 days instead of 15. Treasury holds $40.0M less at other banks, because breaks are cleared daily. Every figure is measured against the pilot baseline.
| Source | Annual value | How |
|---|---|---|
| Capacity released | $8.8M | 134,000 hours at $66 fully loaded, 63,600 of them in payment exceptions |
| Payment losses avoided | $2.2M | Write-offs on late returns and failed recalls, down from $3.6M to $1.4M a year |
| Dispute losses avoided | $3.7M | Provisional credits never reversed and chargebacks filed past the card networks' deadlines, down from $5.9M to $2.2M a year |
| Nostro buffer redeployed | $1.7M | $40.0M of excess correspondent balances, redeployed at 4.25% |
| Total | $16.4M | Against the $45.2M a year it costs to run the workflows in scope: about 260 payments operations, disputes, reconciliation, and regulatory reporting staff at $66, plus $3.6M of payment write-offs and $5.9M of dispute losses |
What stays with people
Agents never make the final call on money or risk. Releasing a payment, every write-off, every dispute decision, every customer letter, fraud referrals, and each regulatory sign-off stay with a named person. A second reviewer approves anything over $250,000. Every agent action records the rule, the evidence, and the approval, and a wrong posting is reversed through the bank's normal process.
