Microsoft provides banks with comprehensive solutions which feature reusable business components that can assist the drive toward cross-channel consistency, enabling tellers and sellers to improve customer relationships, and banks to renew and optimize their core banking and payment systems. As a result, banks large and small around the world are increasing profitability, delivering better customer service, improving retention, and boosting operational efficiency.
In the banking industry, Microsoft provides:
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A rich partner ecosystem, for best-of-breed solutions across all processes.
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Solutions that are easy to integrate and use.
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Reusable business components, which make an investment in any one channel an investment in all channels.
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Technology that supports cross-channel consistency, which costs less and provides the ability to quickly introduce new channels, products, and services.
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Integrated payment solutions that are based on common messaging and provide a competitive advantage.
Channel Renewal is meant to help banking institutions make their investment in renewing one channel a potential investment in all channels. This approach centers on renewing channels such as ATMs, call centers, teller systems, or the in-branch advisor systems with reusable business components that set the stage for cross-channel consistency. With this approach, banks and their employees can deploy new products and services more easily. It also can help improve operational efficiency and better manage risk.
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Branch (teller and seller): Microsoft and its partners deliver products, technologies, and solutions that help branch tellers and sellers develop more profitable customer relationships and increase bank branch profitability. Integrated, easy-to-use collaboration tools and solutions enable customer-facing professionals to create value through better customer connections.
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Customer knowledge: Banks can gain the insight they need, with easy-to-adopt user interfaces, so that all customer interactions are appropriate and consistent, regardless of the channel of contact, while providing a 360-degree view of the customer.
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Loan origination: A workflow-based approach to reducing underwriting costs, enforcing standardized processes, consolidating customer information for reporting, and providing a better view of business opportunities with customers.
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Mobile: Banks can extend all basic functions and services to customers via mobile-based solutions, creating a wide range of new sales and services scenarios for employees.
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Call center: A framework for improving the customer experience and customer retention through effective call routing, matching each call to the appropriate department or resource. The approach also focuses on the integration of self-service channels and assisted channel sales support, increasing employee productivity.
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Internet: Banks can take advantage of existing technology investments to provide customers with access to all products and services from any Web-enabled interface. The solution also lowers the total cost of ownership through improved integration between Internet banking and other channels.
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ATMs: To help banks address high costs, declining revenue, and complex management issues related to their ATM networks, Microsoft and its partners focus on consolidating underlying technical resources and providing a framework for channel integration and domain-managed ATMs that can lower the total cost of ownership. Through this approach, customers will be able to access all products and services from any ATM.
Risk management and compliance focuses on delivering solutions that help enable financial organizations to align their information technology (IT) and business processes to meet risk and compliance requirements, achieve greater operational efficiency, and improve customer satisfaction. Microsoft and its partners also enable companies to integrate information spread across disparate systems for a holistic view of the company, thus empowering employees to identify and share best risk management and compliance practices.
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Document management and records retention: This approach provides version control capabilities, library services, and document level security features that span the entire document management life cycle and ensure compliance with data storage, retrieval, archival, and disposal requirements leveraging partner solutions and the Microsoft platform.
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Audit and controls: Microsoft and its partners help financial services firms put in place the effective checks and balances required to support compliance and governance efforts.
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Risk analytics: A comprehensive reporting environment along with tools and features for business performance management, forecasting, trend analysis, and more with partner solutions that are built on SQL Server using reporting and analysis services.
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Security and privacy management: A focus on balancing organizational risks and ever increasing external threats, which also considers regulatory compliance requirements.
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Business continuity management: An approach to put in place alternative work practices and workflows—such as remote access technology, collaborative solutions, and segregation of critical workflows—to enable employees to provide basic functions remotely in case of incident or natural disaster.
Payment solutions helps financial organizations set the direction for the future of payments by putting in place a more modern, integrated, and competitive payments platform to meet today's demands as well as reveal and support new services and revenue sources. Based on an agile, common messaging platform, these solutions have low acquisition costs, yet increase the efficiency of the payments process so that transactional revenues increase with volume.
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Payments services factory: A single processing platform of commercial payments, increasing straight-through processing and reducing the costs.
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Treasury and cash management: Increased visibility and efficiency between financial institutions and their enterprise and banking partners, making relationships more productive and profitable.
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Payments delivery channels: Helping bankers provide credit card solutions to their customers and merchants that are secure and easy to offer.
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Clearing and settlement: Faster, more efficient payment settlement with an improved ability to work with regulators and central banks in order to set the trends in payments transaction processing, as well as be in control of business and technology strategies.
Advisor platforms enable financial advisors to work more effectively and efficiently across information sources and distribution channels to better service clients. By integrating systems, advisors gain a more holistic view of the customer, along with a greater ability to cross-sell products. With integrated platforms, financial advisors have more time with customers because they have fewer administrative burdens. This approach begins with enhanced tools for client prospecting and spans every aspect of ongoing relationship management.
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Advisor desktop/portal: Providing advisors with a desktop/portal that delivers integrated information and business processes through familiar and easy-to-adopt user interfaces and tools. It gives advisors a holistic view of their clients so they can identify appropriate products and services. It also helps advisors to more effectively prospect for new clients.
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Company and industry-provided services: Systems and tools to aid in attracting and retaining advisors with infrastructure services, such as identity, workflow, rights management, messaging, document retention, data warehousing access, business intelligence, and access to enterprise customer relationship management (CRM) systems.
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Advisory management: Systems and tools to enable an agency, bank, or broker to manage their business, compensation, and compliance, assuring that products are appropriate to the circumstances and the level of sophistication of the principal. The approach also provides supervisory oversight of the effectiveness of the selling function.
Core banking offers a modular line-of-business approach to renewing core banking applications and systems. Enabling a modular, component-based architecture helps banks reduce the risks involved with renewing core banking applications, especially the risk of service disruption.
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Lending systems: This solution focuses on the core system of record for any loan originated and serviced, seamlessly integrating all the steps, processes, and systems required to book a new loan, increasing the efficiency of the credit application process.
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Client data file: An online, real-time system supporting all-day availability for inquiry and update, which includes a facility to manage the entire relationship by providing a composite view of customers and their financial needs.
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Deposit systems: The core system of record for any deposit, providing real-time updates, and often developed as an integrated solution with the client data file and the lending system resulting in enhanced customer relationships and improved customer satisfaction.
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Corporate and wholesale banking: Support of the specialized needs of corporate and wholesale customers, including multi-currency accounts, structured finance, foreign exchange, and syndicated loans.
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Statement production: Helping banks create a capability for a centralized statement product (i.e., generation, not printing) spanning all product types, resulting in consolidation of account statements, online statements, statement vaults, and statement scheduling.
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Credit decisioning: Gives banks the ability to directly measure any customer's current and future value on a profit-and-loss basis by leveraging a system for developing segment- or dynamic-credit decisioning across all loan types and integrated with external data providers.
