Case Study - Banco Unico (now Nedbank Mozambique)

Client profile

Banco Unico (now Nedbank Mozambique) ranks as the fifth largest bank in Mozambique, headquartered in Maputo with 23 branch offices and 600+ employees. The Bank serves individual and corporate clients and manages assets worth MZN 25 billion. Since 2010 it exhibits sustainable growth, solid financial management, and sound approach to risk despite the economic challenges and uncertainties. In recognition of its accomplishments, the Bank has received multiple industry awards, including distinctions for the Mozambican market such as Bank of the Year, Best Consumer Digital Bank, Best New Mobile Banking Application, Visa Managing Risk Award, to name a few. Clearly, that ReconArt client has earned a reputation of an innovative, dynamic and client oriented financial institution. 

Challenges

Since inception, the Bank has swiftly expanded its market share, client base and service portfolio. It witnessed increasing transaction volumes and escalating reconciliations complexity. The Bank’s Cards & Digital Channels Team considers account reconciliation a critical process from risk management and auditability standpoint. Therefore, it came to the conclusion that the daily frequency of the reconciliation cycles and the level of sophistication certainly called for automation. Manual reconciliations run in spreadsheets were getting burdensome, time consuming, and posed risk of errors.

Our client had compiled a comprehensive list of requirements upfront and communicated them clearly in the decision process. They were on the lookout for a unified reconciliation system that can handle complex business logic – multiple data sets to be compared and opportunity to define the matching relationship accordingly (one-to-many, many-to-one, groupings). A flexible, scalable, user-friendly and truly business owned automation software would bring a positive change in the Banco Unico reconciliation routine.

The ReconArt solution

In general, the Bank envisioned a system capable of end-to-end management of the reconciliation flow to achieve optimal results of the process transformation efforts. The bank considered several other reconciliation solution providers and conducted extensive research, including an elaborate Proof of Concept, to make sure the best fit for its needs is identified. ReconArt was among the short-listed vendors. Our platform stood out with an attractive combination of key functionalities and competitive pricing.

The implementation kicked off with the configuration of two major reconciliation processes within the ReconArt environment. The matching involved comparing card transactions (in local currency MZN and USD) from third-party payment network reports to core banking statement records. The operation also includes creating journal entries either prior to or as a result of the matching process and automatically exporting them.

Out-of-the-box ReconArt was able to support the specific file formats involved in the bank’s recon process. Moreover, our platform imports and cleanses the data sets automatically. The ReconArt data enrichment capabilities guaranteed higher data quality and contributed to better matching rates. Automating the matching operation was a first priority for the client, while the required user control over the level of automation was also met by the system.

Email notifications of critical exceptions based on amount and aging thresholds had to be triggered in line with predefined separation of duties.

The reporting output highlighted dashboard visualization of outstanding items and aging statistics, successful match rates, summary of matched transactions. Those reports are readily available in the system’s reports library and provide a varied audience – from account admins and managers to auditors – with a relevant up-to-date progress overview.

Benefits & results achieved with ReconArt

The Bank team were happy to share that the implementation project was smooth and productive. They enjoyed a good collaboration and understanding with our implementation specialist and praised the ReconArt customer approach. Today, Banco Unico is very satisfied with the ReconArt reconciliation tool, claiming it is simple to use and perfectly approachable by business users.

Fast learners, very competent and cooperative, the bank’s reconciliation team became autonomous ReconArt users as soon as the initial training wrapped up. They already consider onboarding new processes and are exploring ReconArt reporting functionality in depth. The platform allows the client to construct unlimited number of reconciliation processes on their own. The Bank is committed to long-term cooperation with ReconArt and looks forward to new product releases and updates.

Functionality and cost-wise, ReconArt has ticked off essentially all client’s must-have boxes. Now the Bank leverages a versatile platform, capable of translating intricate business logic into streamlined automated reconciliation processes. It saves time, it enhances audit readiness, it effortlessly shifts gears from detailed transaction level view to high level reporting. Moreover, our platform gives room for growth and improvement in line with the Bank’s vision and best practices.