With technology enablers such as internet, scanners, multi-function printers, smart-phones, tablets, etc., becoming commonplace and affordable, multi-channel distributed capture has emerged as the most feasible model for document capture. Multi-channel distributed capture enables document capture at the place of origination of a document, including mailrooms, branch-offices, departments, and out-of-office locations.

This model, for document capture at the point of origination, enables quick decision making, faster processing of critical business transactions, reduced operational expenses, and less administrative complexities. Paper-intensive organizations such as banks, financial institutions, government organizations, etc. can leverage distributed capture to improve business performance and enhance customers’ experiences.

However, while a completely distributed capture framework might be ideal for a specific organization, it might not suit the business needs of another organization with a different organization structure and nature of transactions. Before choosing a capture framework for your business, you must first do a need-analysis and then select a capture model that best serves your requirement.

Bio: Garima is part of the Marketing team at Newgen Software.

FATCA stands for the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act. According to leading consultancy firm PWC – “It adds a new chapter to the Internal Revenue Code (Chapter 4) aimed at addressing perceived tax abuse by U.S. persons through the use of offshore accounts. The new rules require foreign financial institutions (FFI’s) to provide the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) with information on certain U.S. persons invested in accounts outside of the U.S. and for certain non-U.S. entities to provide information about any U.S. owners.”

FATCA was enacted by the United States government in 2010, as part of the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment (HIRE) Act. It is an important development by the US to combat offshore non compliance. It is also being seen as an initiative that will increase compliance and transparency around US persons and assets, and hold to task those that do not meet its conditions.

FATCA applies to any individual, US or global banks and institutions, and any company or business entity that engages with US clients or assets over a certain threshold in an account. While FATCA will impact US MNCs and withholding agents, its bearing upon Foreign Financial Institutions (FFIs) will be most profound.

FATCA requires that FFIs and global banks register with the IRS and enter an FFI agreement whereby they promise to identify, collect and report information on offshore bank accounts of their US clients. Entities can register through the FATCA web portal. In order to be included on the IRS’s list of compliant institutions in December 2013, all entities must register before October 25, 2013.

What is your bank’s or organization’s role after FATCA coming into effect?

• Perform a detailed analysis of your existing customer base to filter and identify any U.S. clients and report them to the IRS.
• Send annual reports to the IRS on the assets held and transactions that have occurred on the accounts or portfolios of any U.S. clients.
• Capture additional documentation with respect to new customers as and when they set up an account or portfolio.
• Make modifications or updates in your existing banking system that will withhold the 30% U.S. Tax on customers that refuse to supply the information and documentation required.

Why prepare now?

With FATCA coming into effect, it is imperative for entities that fall under the purview of FATCA to be prepared.

Many strategic and operational decisions need to be made, analysis needs to be done, and systems and controls need to be in place before applying for an agreement, in order to to ensure compliance. If no steps are taken and the deadline is missed, the 30% withholding will begin to be enforced.

Challenges faced by Banks and FFIs:

• FFIs will need to make a strategic call on remaining invested in the US market or exiting it, for the sake of its customers or itself
• Current KYC Processes will need to be overhauled as they don’t gather enough information for FATCA purposes
• Adapting and investing in processes and IT systems to meet the FATCA deadline
• Non-compliance brings with it the real risk of losing revenue from US customers and assets
• Undertake training for key personnel and setting up a dedicated team

How can Newgen help you prepare?

FATCA compliance enabled Newgen’s OmniFlow Solution will assist in the identification, classification, documentation, retention, maintenance and reporting of financial information of US Persons with holdings at your Bank’s legal entities. Our solution acts as a layer on top of your core systems thereby ensuring none of your current processes are disrupted, and that our system can run fluently in the background giving you the reports you need. Newgen’s solution provides a focused workflow to bring uniformity and automation to your due diligence process, thus providing visibility and control.

Five practical issues to keep front-of-mind

• Timing: FATCA is now a timing challenge (not just in terms of key dates but pace of preparation and execution readiness).
• Business Impact: FATCA will have ‘front-to-back’ impact through financial institutions: from customer awareness and information management, through establishing a Transparent, Repeatable and Consistent Process.
• Opportunity: FATCA is not just a challenge it is an opportunity; to improve customer data quality and availability, to open new dialog with customers, to transform compliance in this key area. FATCA will have major implications for customer data quality and availability.
• Imperative and Impending: FATCA is a ‘must fix’ not a ‘maybe fix it at five minutes to midnight’ – it WILL happen and financial institutions need to have a clear picture of their readiness.

Immediate: The time to act is NOW!

Name: Imroz Adeeb

Bio: Imroz is Associate Manager - Corporate Communications at Newgen Software.

The printing industry is in the middle of a rapid transformation where technology is empowering the growth in the number of online media channels that consumers are driven to engage with. Consumer Behaviors are changing the role of media and communication in civil society, and these preferences are forcing businesses to rethink the way they interact with customers and prospects.

The effectiveness and efficiency of the print media is at stake. Print channels are perceived as just one of many media channels that consumers are accessing; the value and role of print is changing.  Organizations have begun labeling ‘Printing’ as just another cost activity associated with customer service. They have started moving to digital channels and optimizing their costs. They foresee digital channels as providing better value and experience to their customers.

Interactive Communication is the next buzzword being talked about and desired by organizations. Organizations can send customized & personalized Interactive communications with drill down capabilities, page navigations and sorting. Technology has enabled organizations to send emails with voice and video. Customers can be driven to a website by QR codes in personalized messages that point to product promotions and special customized offers. Systems can track customer behaviors and adapt their marketing strategies accordingly. Efficiency of the marketing campaigns can easily be monitored by tracking customers who are driven to a promotion of their interest. Online web-to-print portals are being deployed to help optimize the marketing supply chain. By doing this, organizations are transforming their cost activity into a revenue generation activity.  This is also helping them in attaining their CSR goals of reducing Carbon Footprints – “Going Green”. A leading Analyst firm’s research has found that while the market for offset printing has remained flat, e-enabled digital communications & advertisement have been increasing.

To keep pace with the dynamic changes in this market, organizations need a comprehensive customer communication management solution. Newgen’s CCM solution is ideally suited to the current needs of customers, and easily adaptable to changes in future requirements.  It is an integrated platform that supports both print and digital media channels. The idea is to help organizations better deliver customer experiences over multi-channel communication modes.

Driven by the rise in penetration of mobile phones and tablets, in the past few years, it has become ineluctable for every business, to embrace mobility. Especially any business, for which success depends largely on customers’ service experiences, must have a sound mobile strategy, in alignment with the changing customer preferences.

While mobility finds its applicability across all industries, it can play an essentially critical role in the success of an insurance organization. When leveraged across the insurance value chain, mobility can yield real business value, in terms of enhanced customer satisfaction, simpler processes, and reduced cycle times and administrative costs.

Insurers can use mobile technology to establish virtual offices for their field staff, allowing them ‘anytime-anywhere’ access to relevant information, such as customer details, new policy features, policy quotes, etc. This would result in faster sales cycles and improved revenues. Using mobile applications, insurers can enable sales agents to capture customer information at the point of contact, transfer it to the central processing office in real time, and initiate the processing of applications instantly.

Customer self-service is another area where mobility can add immense value. Today, mobile phones have become a norm, and the proliferation of smartphones is witnessing unprecedented growth rates. In such a scenario, in order to retain and expand its customer-base, it becomes imperative for an insurance organization to offer self-service tools, allowing customers to access their policy information, locate agents, pay premiums and apply for claims over their mobile devices.

Owing to the benefits that it promises to insurers, the case for adoption of mobile solutions is very strong. However, before an insurer invests in mobile solutions, it is important to outline a sound mobile strategy based on its specific requirements, in order to maximize the benefits of mobility.

Bio: Garima is part of the Marketing team at Newgen Software.

Automatic Clearing House (ACH) payment system was envisaged in the United States during the early 1970’s. It was a result of studies conducted by the Federal Reserve and also suggested by industry stalwarts that the increasing volume of paper checks used by businesses and consumers to pay their bills would eventually exceed the ability of the existing computer systems to process and sort the checks efficiently. Hence, the Automated Clearing House (ACH) payments system was designed to allow corporations and consumers to reduce or eliminate the use of paper checks to make routine payments. As for 2011, this network processed an estimated 20.2 billion ACH transactions with a total value of $33.91 trillion.

Automated Clearing House (ACH) system is better recognized as Electronic Clearing Service (ECS) in India. ECS is currently available in around 89 centers in the country. It is operated by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) at 15 centers and by commercial banks at the remaining centers. With the introduction of NACH or National Electronic Clearing Service (NECS) by Reserve Bank of India, the reach of the system has been further deepened and all identified core banking branches of banks are to be included as part of the upgraded system.

The Proposal

NPCI proposes to build, implement and manage an Automated Clearing House (ACH) system with built-in security features and multiple level data validation facility accessible to all participants across the country. The new centralized ACH solution or NACH is expected to consolidate the current multiple ECS systems in due course of time and provide a framework for removal of local barriers /inhibitors and harmonization of standards and practices.

The NACH platform will have national footprint which will cover 82000+ bank branches. The platform will be robust, secure and scalable with both transaction and file based transaction processing capabilities. It will have best-in-class security features, cost efficiency & payment performance (STP) for all participants. The intention is to create fully automated processes with the use of open standards and best industry practices. This will prescribe a single set of rules (Operating and Business), practices and standards which are common across the country for all Participants, Service Providers, and Users etc.

The NACH platform will support financial inclusion measures initiated by banks, other financial institutions, Government etc. by providing support to UID and Mobile based ACH transactions. The proposed system will allow member banks to design their own products and help address specific needs of the corporate world, Government and retail customers.

Objectives of NACH:

• Leverage on distribution footprint and technology to provide a modern, robust platform to handle large volumes of repetitive payments
• Define and Manage Governance Process by way of a set of Operating Guidelines, practices and standards for all Participants, Service Providers and Users etc.
• Introduce a refined Mandate Management system and processes with defined and transparent SLAs.
• Provide Enhancements and Enrichments – additional data elements in the message formats, secured access, and user control.
• Facilitate Exceptions and Dispute management
• Support financial inclusion by providing support for Aadhaar based transaction

Name: Imroz Adeeb

Bio: Imroz is Associate Manager - Corporate Communications at Newgen Software.

GoI’s proposal for “Use & File” approach, being considered by IRDA, is aimed towards reducing the approval cycle for a product by IRDA. It is going to be a vehement task for Insurance firms to devise a product that is best suited for a given market segment, and stay ahead of competition. This will involve high degree of customer analytics, customer segmentation analysis & targeted promotion and customer servicing through various channels of communication. Proper infrastructure has to be in place to support such an initiative.

“Bank can act as broker for selling Insurance” – There is need for integration and automation of Insurance processes along with the banking processes to have a common infrastructure for selling insurance products and services. This will directly reduce the time for customer on-boarding by having an automated and shared infrastructure between the banking and insurance divisions.  Such integration would enable usage of bank KYC as a valid proof of document for issuance of policy to customers, resulting in faster & easy acquisition.

Horizontally, there is push by the GoI as well as the industry for banking and financial services to penetrate in the rural population. “Rural Insurance” is one such area. Rural areas in India are still far away from digitization and lack infrastructure. e-Mobility solution is one of the technology advancements that most of the Insurance organizations are looking forward to employ, such that their agents are well equipped to capture,  acquire & process customers’ data,  while being on-the move and enable for shortest possible time for policy issuance.

With its proposed plan and changes in regulations, the GoI aims at the betterment of the Indian Insurance industry, and the reach of insurance services to the uninsured rural population. Organizations need to adapt to newer technologies to provide better services and meet the demands of customers and regulators. They need to have intelligent and integrated platforms for Customer & Data Analytics, Social Media Integration, Capturing & Managing Enterprise Content (in any form), Automated Business Process (not only intra-organizational but inter-organization too), Mobile applications and integrated customer communication through various channels.

Newgen has continuously worked towards aligning its solutions with the current needs of its customers. Newgen provides an Intelligent Business Process Management platform, that allows for data processing from multiple channels on the fly, enables data analytics in real time, captures and assesses trends by integrating with social media, and provides real-time communication based on customer profiling.

Name: Benjamin

Bio: Benjamin is Sr.Manager - Products & Solutions at Newgen and part of Newgen's Center of Excellence for Insurance vertical.

With the Government’s recently announced 12-point action plan for Insurance, the benefits to the company and policyholders will make Insurance more fundamental and relevant.

The focus on the customer oriented business model will further drive Insurance companies in embracing the emerging technologies. Due to the data-intensive nature of the industry, primarily because it involves collection, processing and maintaining of information relating to insurance policies, IT will continue to act as a critical enabler. In the volatile insurance environment where insurers introduce recurrent changes in process model, product design, IT has helped to gain through web-based, online, front-ending improvements for efficient selling, analysis and decision making. Technology investments will be crucial in the dynamic insurance environment not only to serve the competitive edge but also to maintain the regulatory obligations and hygiene required.

Name: Beena Manoj Simon

Web Site: http://www.futuregenerali.in

Bio: Beena is Senior Manager - Project Management & Operations, at Future Generali India Life Insurance Co.

It took me exactly a day to write this blog. In the same time the following happened.

1. 1 billion pieces of content were added to Facebook.

2. Zynga processed 1 petabyte of content for players, a volume of data that is unmatched in the social game industry.

3. More than 1 billion searches were performed only on Twitter

4. More than 2 billion videos were watched on YouTube

That is not all. According to IBM, every day we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data. That is a unit of data I never thought existed even in the dictionary and for me an Urban Legend so to speak. The amount of data created each day has increased to such levels that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone. This data is big data. An understatement to say the least.

Big Data will be of no use till the time it remains Data. The Big Data needs to be converted to Big Information.

The term Big Data is used to describe voluminous amount of unstructured and semi-structured data a company creates — data that would take too much time and cost too much money to load into a relational database for analysis.

So how do we manage the so called “big data“? What is the objective of managing it? What is the expected outcome of this extremely tedious exercise? The massive size of Big Data goes beyond the ability of average database software tools to capture, store, manage, and analyze them effectively.

Bill Hoggarth, speaker at the ITWeb BPM Summit, says “Unlike any other IT catchphrase, big data is here to stay because it’s being led and sponsored by business thought leaders.” From a BPM perspective, he also adds “It’s not so much how BPM helps with addressing big data, but rather how big data helps to address BPM challenges”. As companies shift towards more customer-centric approaches to managing their business, they are looking for frameworks to manage their business processes that can actually predict customer behavior.

Organizations have increasingly started thinking in terms of business processes rather than individual applications. The combination of BPM and advanced analytics tools that have ready access to massive amounts of data creates intriguing possibilities that could serve to automate any number of business functions.

Senior Management want businesses run on data-driven decisions. They want scenarios and simulations that provide immediate guidance on the best actions to take when disruption occur, disruptions ranging from unexpected competitors or an earthquake in a supply zone to a customer signaling a desire to switch providers. Management wants to understand optimal solutions based on complex business parameters or new information, and they want to take action quickly.

Of course, many business executives have been reluctant to attempt to automate many of the processes for fear that the data those decisions are being made on is either incorrect or incomplete. But as the volume of data for those decisions increases, the confidence in those decisions increases because the level of extrapolation being made based on the available data is significantly less.

It’ll be interesting to see what impact Big Data ultimately has on BPM adoption or vice versa. It is of utmost importance they complement each other to contribute to the growth of the organization. It is not just a matter of what came first – The egg or the chicken.

Name: Swapnil

Bio: Swapnil is part of Newgen's Presales team, working for the company's Regional Office in Mumbai.

In the insurance industry, where customer service is highly document intensive and process cycles last multiple days, the importance and need for innovative technologies to gain a competitive edge is critical. Some of the major challenges faced by insurers in processing claims include:

• Missing data
• Submission delays – transportation of documents
• Data entry errors

The answer to these problems is ‘Mobile Capture’. Insurance workers in the field can leverage on mobile capture technologies to capture customer information at the point of contact with the customer and deliver this information electronically to enterprise applications for processing. Field executives simply need to snap photos of customers’ driver’s licenses, insurance cards, etc., and subsequently route the resulting digital information via a mobile app to a central site for processing. Thus, Mobile Capture enables insurance companies to connect decentralized insurance agency networks and reduce cycle times for processing claims. 

Business Benefits

• Real-time communication
• Paperless environment
• Digital storage of data
• Reduced cycle times for processing claims
• Enhanced customer experience
• Cost savings
  • No scanning required
  • Reduced courier costs
  • Duplicity and storage costs

Bio: Garima is part of the Marketing team at Newgen Software.

Newgen Software Technologies Limited has been present in the UAE banking marketplace for long, as a leading technology vendor, and has partnered with many banks, finance houses and corporate houses for implementing world class payment and banking automation solutions. A leading solution provider in the payments landscape, Newgen has implemented Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT) solutions and Image-based Cheque Clearing Systems (ICCS) across the Indian Sub-continent, the Middle East, Africa and the SEA regions. Newgen has also been engaged in the various DDS seminars and discussions conducted by the Central Bank so far. Newgen’s solution for Direct Debit payments provides a unique opportunity for banks in the UAE to opt for a world class, cost-effective and ready-to-use product for handling the DDS mandate.

With the objective of addressing every aspect of the Direct Debit system and its implications to banks, service providers and consumers, Newgen is hosting the ‘Next Generation Payment Systems’ Seminar to in Dubai on Tuesday, August 28, 2012.

The seminar is being held to present Newgen’s vision of a unified payments hub for banks, along with:

• Demonstration of “Newgen’s Direct Debit Solution” on UAEDDS System
• Views of senior bankers / industry experts along with their experiences in addressing and mitigating key challenges related to payments
• Creation of opportunities to network and collaborate with leading financial players in the Middle East, and building new partnerships

Who Should Attend:

• Senior Payment/Operations Executives from banks and financial institutions
• Senior Executives from banking technology sector

Seminar Leaders and Speakers: Thought Leaders and Solution Experts in Payment Systems

The session will be followed by networking drinks and dinner. With a nearing deadline for the introduction of the UAE Direct Debit System (UAEDDS), banks need to assess the adaptability of their existing legacy systems to the requirements of the new payment system. Newgen believes that such an event will help banks to exchange views with industry experts, explore automation of error-prone processes, and efficiently manage electronic fund transfers, while reducing their operational expenses.

Name: Amandeep

Bio: Amandeep handles the pre-sales operations for payment solutions in Newgen, including ICCS and Direct Debit products.