The Solution
Enter Ncontracts — a suite of interconnected solutions to meet the ever-evolving demands of modern financial services risk management. With features that allow for efficient task assignment and real-time updates, Ncontracts gave Beth Seals and her team the ability to transform Bankers’ Bank of Kansas's risk management practices.
"I think our bank's ROI in using Ncontracts is based on the manhours we're saving," Beth explained. “The processes are just so seamless. There were many things we did manually requiring a significant amount of back-and-forth conversation. These items are now housed within the system.”
Leveraging a range of Ncontracts solutions, the bank implemented a customized risk management system covering enterprise risk management (ERM), regulatory compliance, third-party risk, and business continuity. Those solutions include:
- Nrisk, a highly customizable ERM software that enables financial institutions to continuously evaluate, measure, and report on risk in real time.
- Nvendor, a tool that allows Bankers' Bank of Kansas to manage vendor relationships more efficiently while reducing costs and risks.
- Ncomply, a solution that assists teams in navigating regulatory changes and compliance responsibilities, consolidating all compliance research and tasks into one integrated platform.
- Nfindings, an exam and audit findings solution that ensures every finding is addressed promptly and thoroughly.
- Ncontinuity, business continuity management software that helps Beth and her team proactively address business disruptions and ensure resilience.
The days of multiple conversations and missed messages are long gone. The team can easily assign tasks to colleagues without worrying about whether information will be lost or forgotten. For example, the bank's business impact analysis (BIA), a document that was previously overlooked, is now updated and gets the attention it needs through Ncontinuity.
“Our BIA Excel document used to require updating multiple tabs and it was easy for employees to miss completing both tabs. Now everything is all in one system and there are tasks we no longer need to complete,” Beth said.
Another area that posed challenges was addressing audit and exam findings both effectively and efficiently.
"When we have audits or exam findings that we want to work on, I can send them out to multiple people, and they can work on them together. All information is in one place instead of trying to blend it together," Beth shared about Nfindings.
The same collaborative approach is applied through Ncomply, which Beth uses to monitor real-time updates on her team's progress. "When viewing our historical documents, it shows exactly what we did."
Vendor relationships are notoriously difficult to manage manually, as one institution can have multiple vendors at different tiers. The prebuilt templates with due diligence questions in Nvendor help the bank as they oversee various relationships — from critical vendors to low-risk third-party service providers.
Regardless of the solution, Beth considers Ncontracts to be her “core,”, a place that she works from daily while saving the bank valuable time and human resources. "Tasks that used to take us 160 hours are now more like 30 hours,” she noted.
"My favorite product is a tie between Nrisk and Nvendor," Beth says, citing the ability to send risk and vendor risk assessments in her Ncontracts tools instead of a spreadsheet, underscoring the importance of having automated, easily navigable features.
"Ncontracts help us to see the bigger risk. Whether it's in Nrisk, Nvendor, or Nfindings, we're able to get the information needed to create a holistic approach and a broad view of on the functions in our institution.
This comprehensive view of risk is especially critical during exams and audits. The bank can easily share its processes and systems with examiners, which has garnered Beth and her team positive feedback.
With Ncontracts "on all the time in the background," Beth can easily stay updated on regulatory news (Ncomply), current risk assessments (Nrisk), policy updates (Ncomply), vendor reviews (Nvendor), and findings (Nfindings).
