Thomson Reuters Confirmation Drives Efficiency, Security, And Cost Savings For Banks

Thomson Reuters Confirmation is an easy-to-use platform that streamlines and simplifies the audit confirmation process, allowing banks to save employee time, reduce confirmation timelines, and enhance the customer experience. As a secure solution that centralizes the end-to-end process in one location, Confirmation delivers cost savings by eliminating the need for banks to develop their own internal solutions. Furthermore, the platform is straightforward to adopt and scale as needed, which offers deployment flexibility to banks.

Thomson Reuters commissioned Forrester Consulting to interview five representatives of four organizations and conduct a Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study to better understand the benefits, costs, and risks associated with Thomson Reuters Confirmation.¹ This abstract will focus on the value of Confirmation to banks.

For this Spotlight, Forrester conducted an additional interview with the chief controls officer at a global bank using Thomson Reuters Confirmation.

This interviewee said that prior to using Confirmation, employees at their bank primarily relied on manual methods such as email to complete confirmation requests. The bank explored building its own internal tool with more advanced capabilities, but the interviewee noted that this proved expensive and brought only limited success. Such legacy approaches lacked consistency and required significant employee time. These limitations led to inefficiencies and a desire for a more streamlined and centralized process.

The interviewee said that after adopting Confirmation, their bank had a more efficient, automated, and accurate confirmation process. Key results from the investment include employee time saved, enhanced security, improved client experience, and cost savings.

INVESTMENT DRIVERS FOR Banks

The banking interviewee said that prior to the adoption of Confirmation, their bank struggled with challenges in its legacy environment, including:

• Labor-intensive processes. The interviewee noted that completing confirmations with legacy approaches that relied on manual methods was ultimately inefficient. The bank therefore sought a solution that would streamline the process and save employee time.
• Need for greater speed and accuracy. A lack of automation slowed down the confirmation process and made it more prone to errors. The interviewee noted that longer timelines with a higher probability of inaccuracy can ultimately damage customer relationships.
• Expense of building own tool. The interviewee explained that developing an internal tool would be a substantial and expensive project for their bank: “We brought in several teams to look into the process [of developing our own tool], but it proved to require quite heavy IT involvement. So, we decided it’s actually not something we wanted to do internally. We then went the Thomson Reuters route.”

Key Results For Banks

The interviewee said key results of the investment for their bank include:

Time savings on confirmations. The interviewee reported that employee time savings was a top benefit of Confirmation and that bank employees completed confirmations 50% to 60% more efficiently on average with the platform.

• Employees found Confirmation to be easy to use, and it improved efficiency with automation and intelligent workflow. The interviewee explained that Confirmation was a centralized, user-friendly platform that delivered considerable financial benefits given the employee time savings it provided.
• Confirmation features saved employee time. The interviewee added: “With Confirmation, the process is more automated throughout. That saves significant time. And there are different workflows which vary from business to business that are triggered.”
• Confirmation served as an end-to-end platform that made tracking easier. The interviewee explained: “The process is end-to-end on the [Confirmation] platform. Everything is tracked in the system — the conversations, the documents, the approvals, [and] all the details. We can go back if there are any follow-up questions, and for any future reviews, we know exactly what was done previously.”
• Bank employees gained time for higher-value work. The interviewee said efficiency gains with Confirmation gave employees more time to spend on analytical and growth-oriented work. Additionally, they explained that because Confirmation is easy to use, more junior employees could handle confirmations, which freed more experienced employees to focus on higher-value tasks.

A secure and trusted process. The interviewee reported a high level of trust and confidence in Confirmation, and they noted that the platform supported their bank’s goals of enhancing security and accuracy:

• Confirmation provided a secure platform for confirmations. The interviewee noted that Confirmation supported their bank’s priorities of maintaining data security and confidentiality. They said, “There’s a greater sense of security [with Confirmation] and knowing where the request is coming from.”
• Confirmation provided more structured and accurate requests. The interviewee said: “On the platform, [inaccuracy is] significantly reduced because you know exactly where the request is coming from. Whereas email and other mechanisms can be prone to error.”

Improved client experience. The interviewee said Confirmation helped their bank deliver a smooth and accurate process with quick turnaround times, which improved the customer experience and ultimately strengthened overall business relationships.

• Shorter timelines with Confirmation improved customer satisfaction. The interviewee emphasized that Confirmation allowed employees to quickly execute time-sensitive requests and avoid delays, which contributed to building and maintaining customer relationships.
• Confirmation is widely used by audit firms. The interviewee said Confirmation is widely used by audit firms, so the bank utilized the platform for the overwhelming majority of requests. This delivered a more consistent and streamlined process for a broad array of customers.
• Confirmation can be used globally. The interviewee added that their organization used Confirmation on a global scale. They said, “One of the rationales that drove our decision to adopt Confirmation is the ability to globally deploy it and have more automated system [across regions].”

Cost savings. The interviewee noted that Confirmation delivered cost savings because the platform allowed the bank to avoid building its own internal confirmation system, which would be an expensive and time-consuming undertaking. The interviewee said Confirmation does not charge subscription fees to the bank and is straightforward to deploy.

• Thomson Reuters does not charge banks for use of the platform. The interviewee said Thomson Reuters does not charge subscription fees to banks, which made Confirmation an attractive solution. While the interviewee noted that training and change management was part of the implementation process, they said the platform was easy to adopt, use, and scale as needed.
• Building internal systems would be costly. The interviewee stated: “There are cost savings in the sense that you don’t have to manage something internally. Any workflow tracking system of that sort would be an internal cost.”
• Confirmation provides deployment flexibility. Thomson Reuters offers API delivery for Confirmation. Moreover, the interviewee said use of the platform can be scaled as needed, allowing banks to utilize it for the desired number of confirmations.

Appendix A: Endnotes