The Point

Today's financial institutions are managing an increasingly complex payments landscape, juggling the demands of growth, compliance and changing expectations. Consider how different your business would be if you could instead focus on providing an exceptional experience for your customers.

Isn't that what matters most?

Outsourcing ACH and account reconciliation services (ARP) allow you to do just that. As financial services continue to grow in complexity, outsourcing payments processing can help financial institutions of all sizes turn their attention to their core competencies.  It also provides an opportunity to better manage cost, leverage talent, improve efficiency, and scale to provide differentiated services.

I know you're often pulled in many different directions and it's easy to lose sight of the most important person in an organization's success story – the customer. By engaging a third-party vendor, financial institutions can focus on the right things – the people you serve, growth, your staff and regulatory compliance.

Lessons Learned

A few years ago, I worked for a financial institution during an in-house implementation. We would have benefited greatly from leveraging experienced resources and technical infrastructure, as this would have allowed our key personnel to focus on the day-to-day business – and made for a more efficient implementation.

It's increasingly difficult to do all that is required of a financial institution without third-party help, especially when you're a smaller organization. Outsourced ACH payment processing is a good example of leveraging key partnerships. An experienced third party can help manage increasing ACH volumes – up 5.6 percent in 2015 – to ultimately deliver the experience consumers expect. Outsourcing allows financial institutions of all sizes access to the functionality, risk mitigation tools and robust reporting available with the top solutions but without the cost and staff time associated with acquiring, operating and maintaining the required systems.

Why outsource?

Volume – Many financial institutions look to a third party to support growing transaction volumes, whether due to a merger, acquisition or organic growth.

Commercial orientation – For financial institutions with a large number of commercial accounts or plans to grow that line of business, outsourced payment processing offers additional treasury management features and functionality and the opportunity to offer value-added services that create additional revenue.

Risk mitigation – Outsourced payment processing can help satisfy regulators and auditors by providing additional controls and functionality in compliance with NACHA, FFIEC and OCC guidelines, and other regulations.

Improved efficiency – Outsourcing payment processing can help eliminate manual workarounds and increase efficiencies in a financial institution's day-to-day processing. Transaction volumes are usually able to scale without accompanying staffing costs.

The bottom line? The way we move money is changing as the global economy and consumer expectations drive faster, more secure payments. Not only is there a need to process payments faster, but also in an environment that demands greater regulatory scrutiny. Outsourcing payment processing can help an organization take advantage of a service provider's subject matter expertise and technical scale to deliver the payments experience people expect in today's 24/7 world.