cedrus bank strengthens its compliance & risk management
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Cedrus Bank was founded in 2015 when Cedrus Invest Bank
(CIB) completed its acquisition of Standard Chartered
Lebanon from Standard Chartered Bank. Cedrus Invest
Bank and Cedrus Bank together form the Cedrus Group and offer a
diversified range of banking products and services across commercial,
retail, private and investment banking. Along with the acquisition
of Standard Chartered Bank, came the complexity of consolidating
multiple systems, including systems related to compliance and risk
management. .
At the time of the acquisition, the bank was using multiple systems,
data sources and conventional tools to perform the day to day
activities of compliance and risk management which impacted the
time consumed and in turn employee efficiency. This case study is
a summary of how Cedrus Bank enhanced its compliance and risk
management operations using Capital Banking Solutions (CBS) as a
technology and solution partner
With a clear objective of implementing a consolidated system
characterised by flexibility, scalability, and reliability, Cedrus Bank
realised CBS’s Capital Compliance suite to be the best fit solution.
Further, Capital Compliance built on an open and scalable architecture
is accompanied by robust deployment, comparatively lower TCO,
local presence for the quick support and existing positive relationship.
For a financial institution which is of the size of Cedrus Bank, it was
not easy to change core modules and processes, i.e., compliance and
risk management of the bank. From compliance officers’ perspective,
there is always a considerable and justified amount of hesitation
to change the existing system, its operations, and the associated
process. Since the beginning and throughout implementation CBS’s
team of consultants deployed at the implementation site played a
critical role to handhold the Cedrus Bank team, educate them and
address all their concerns and queries to gain the initial trust and
improve the bank team’s confidence on the solution.
The software suite implemented at Cedrus Bank, i.e., Capital
Compliance v9 included the following:
Capital Compliance - Anti-Money Laundering (AML)
• Follows risk-based scoring approach, supporting automatic and
manual scoring
• Predefined rules and scenarios with an opportunity to build
scenarios
• Real-time filtering to ensure transaction credibility
The implementation was completed within four months and involved
a total of 3 consultants from CBS who coordinated with Compliance
Officers as a single point of contact from Cedrus Bank. The
implementation of Capital Compliance product suite was running in
parallel with the core banking implementation, and hence, the system
has to be made available along with the core banking system.
Following were some of the key benefits achieved from the
implementation:
• Automated risk scoring processes, behavioral client profiling
based on defined scenarios
• Detailed parameterization of the solution concerning triggers
and alerts
• Built-in workflow and integrated document management
systems
• Advanced reporting and alerts management.
Any solution implementation is associated with a unique set of
challenges. However, the key to success is in a collaborative approach
to mitigate the challenges and eliminate potential risks. Following
are some of the key challenges faced during implementation & an
overview of innovative ways in which the challenges were mitigated
from being potential risks.
Cedrus Bank Strengthens its Compliance & Risk Management with Capital Banking Solutions
CASE STUDY
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IBS Journal June 2019 49
the number of customisations, the harder becomes
the maintenance in a live environment. With extensive
parameterisation encouraged by CBS, the associated
potential risk is mitigated, and Cedrus Bank requirements
met sufficiently.
With the successful implementation, the platform addresses
consolidation of applications with AML Profiling, FATCA and CRS all
available at one place. The solution currently caters for assessing
risk with a total of 14 different scenarios for triggers and alerts using
a combination of 10 KYC fields to determine an automated score. In
conclusion, the integration of a new compliance and risk management
solution platform with a Core Banking application has been beneficial
in centralising and streamlining Cedrus Bank operations for flexibility,
scalability and reliability.
• Timelines: With about a total of four months in hand, there was
no room for any delay or deviation from the implementation
objectives. One of the major tasks was to complete the User
Acceptance Testing (UAT) within one month and be able to
validate the set-up. Cedrus Bank and the CBS team took this
up as a challenge backed by rigorous preparations for UAT
concerning designing test strategy, test cases preparation and
so on. A collaborative approach towards UAT preparation and
execution helped in achieving the milestone.
• People readiness: One of the critical success factors for any
implementation, often overlooked, is the people readiness.
Achieving success in all other areas but not getting people
readiness correct would not bear optimum results. To address
the same, CBS adopted the ‘train the trainer’ approach where
a group of people is trained first hand by the CBS team and,
further, the training is passed on to a bigger group of users
by Cedrus Bank trainers. With this, the people readiness was
ensured in less than two months during implementation.
• Adapting workflow: Usually when a new solution is being
implemented, adapting product workflow to the organisation
structure of the bank becomes a challenge. While addressing
the associated challenges, the product/workflow undergoes
customisation, which in itself is a potential risk. The more
KEY FACTSBank: Cedrus Bank
Headquarters: Dora, Lebanon
Asset size : $2 billion (2018)
Supplier: Capital Banking Solutions
Solution: Capital Compliance v9
Timeline: 4 months
“Cedrus Bank selected Capital Banking Solutions (CBS) for its core, compliance and digital banking systems because CBS is a local supplier with professional services and has accepted the challenge to implement the systems in a short time, as stipulated by the bank.
Elie Barakat, Group CIO, Cedrus Bank Sal & Cedrus Invest Bank
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