BPO. White Paper. Agility in Financial Services: White labeling to Improve Time-to-Market for New Products

Transcription

1 BPO White Paper Agility in Financial Services: White labeling to Improve Time-to-Market for New Products

2 About the Authors Sunil Gopinath, Assistant General Manager, TCS Sunil is a member of the Corporate Banking Domain - Entitlement Process in TCS BPS. He manages the delivery of the process. He has over 18 years of experience in financial services, delivery, planning, analysis, transition, cost control, compliance, internal audit and project management. P. Manikanda Parameswaran, General Manager, TCS Mani is a member of the TCS BPS Corporate Banking Domain, under Global Investigations, Reconciliations and Global Entitlement unit. He manages the delivery of the process. He has over 20 years of experience in delivery, planning, analysis, transition, cost control, compliance, internal audit and project management.

3 Customer purchasing patterns evolve with the economic climate. The changing dynamics of these patterns drive retailers to deliver additional choice, quality and value. Fast developing technology and evolving consumer behavior are forcing organizations to innovate in their products and offerings to drive significant efficiency gain and consumer value. Like all retailers financial services institutions too are eager to enhance their services through novel and customized offerings and upgrading to the latest in technology. They are making efforts to customize according to customer demand regardless of the size of the market. Compelled to innovate and develop newer service range and products, the financial services industry is also leveraging the white label concept. White labeling enables these institutions to provide a packaged service that allows business to grow faster and at a lower cost. Even though, constant innovations come at considerable cost, white label products are being recognized as the winning formula for both the retailer and the customer. White label products offer speed in responding to the customer s evolving needs. Retailers can benefit from increased margins, improved brand loyalty and growth. White label product providers, on the other hand, can gain significant economies of scale. With increasing industry wide efforts to re-evaluate expenses and yet cater to evolving demands, white labeling offers financial services institutions the perfect avenue for cost reduction, assistance in research and development, as well as in product testing. This paper explores how white label products can refine service levels, and widen the product range in the financial services industry and capitalize on the resulting customer loyalty by playing a significant role in their consumers financial affairs.

4 Contents Introduction 5 What is White Labeling? 5 How does White Labeling work in the Financial Sector? 6 Roles of the Distributor Bank and the Provider Bank 6 How White Labeling works in case of partnership with Business Process Service (BPS) providers 8 Advantages of White Labeling for Distributor Bank 8 Future of White Labeling 9 Conclusion 9

5 Introduction Emerging trends in the financial services industry encourage the merging of traditional and innovative banking products. More cost efficient offerings and products are replacing the standardized brands of major retail banks. These new offerings operate on technologically advanced platforms without the costs of carry over procedures and systems. This enables them to provide a better and cheaper product to the consumer. An increasing number of white label concepts are finding takers in the market for innovative financial services. White labeling is also creating opportunities for banking service providers to assimilate innovations into their product portfolio with a diversified and differentiated brand strategy. This paper looks at the current trends in white label products for financial services and how financial institutions can leverage them to reduce time to market and adhere to safety and regulations, while simultaneously enhancing their brands. What is White Labeling? White labeling can be broadly defined to include arrangements where a product or service is offered under the brand of one company (the distributor) while a separate company (the provider) actually makes the product and/or provides the service. These are called white label products. White labeling allows producers access to a wider market than they would otherwise reach, and helps distributors to offer a wider range of branded products or services. Examples of white label products can be found in the retail industry and this concept is now increasingly being used in financial services too. White labeling provides banks with the opportunity to distribute services across a wider set of customers and products and involves meeting the expectations of the bank (distributor), the white label partner and the banks end customers. The process flow is custom-built as per the agreement with the customers and the partner. Following an effective process flow, which is also customized and is always client or agency-specific, minimizes the turnaround time. A high-level workflow in the case of distribution through an online channel is shown in Figure 1. Industry and Technology Services Product/Service/ Deliverable Deliverable is White labeled as per the requirement Agency s Deliverables Deliverable as per Agency s complete plan to its clients Client discusses pricing and receives the deliverable Client receives technology consulting services at a price from the agency Figure 1: High-level view of workflow 5

6 How does White Labeling work in the Financial Sector? Banks, brokers and financial institutions are using white labeled solutions to satisfy the demand for trading from their private investor client base. Banking systems are multifaceted applications with an array of features that are significantly different from institutional systems. These systems are expensive to develop in-house. Hence, banks are driven to use third party products and services. White labeling is the fastest and most efficient way for a bank (among an ever growing list of services in a competitive market) to reduce the cost of developing and maintaining a platform, while ensuring risk management and efficiency of back office operations. This ensures that there are no delays in launching an offering. Roles of the Distributor Bank and the Provider Bank Understanding the functional details of the white labeling application is necessary to fully appreciate the roles of the different entities. A white labeling application is essentially the electronic contact point between a bank and its clients. This involves three kinds of entities: Distributor banks those that provide products and services to their customers Provider banks those that operate the white labeling application; provide helpdesk support and training of end-users on the products and services offered Vendor Company the intermediaries that facilitate the flow of information between the distributor and the provider banks The distributor bank deals with its clients, conducts background checks and provides the relevant documents to the white labeling bank. The white labeling bank supports the distributor bank and its endcustomers with system support and other technology related assistance. It also provides training and guidance through implementation managers and continual support through helpdesk services. The process flow is depicted in Figure 2. 6

7 Process Flow of accessing the White Label application Distributor Bank Communicates with client and sends intake forms to Provider Bank No Provider Bank checks for completeness of forms submitted by the client Forms complete? Yes Provider Bank will submit the forms to Vendor Company. Vendor Company will validate forms. Forms valid? No Yes Vendor Bank completes entitlements, enters customer details thereby creating customer entity Vendor Bank trains customer and provides customer support for Provider Banks customers for a limited time After the time limit Provider Bank will extend customer support and Help Desk Figure 2: The process flow for accessing the White Label application The process flow for accessing the white labeled application works as follows: The distributor bank gets the deals from its customers The distributor bank provides the deals to the provider bank with the products for the customers The provider bank opens the deals with the vendor company The vendor company speaks to the customers of the distributor bank about the products offered The vendor company provides training to personnel and support to the customers on behalf of the distributor bank The vendor company provides clients with a Business As Usual contact list The vendor company provides all the operational data to the provider bank The distributor bank pays fees to the provider bank and for every product that their customers carry out. These fees are revenues for the provider bank. 7

8 How White Labeling works in case of partnership with Business Process Service (BPS) providers White labeling can work in conjunction with services offered by BPS providers. Here are some examples to illustrate how and where this can work: Finance and Accounting: Finance and Accounting BPS and corporate banking institutions often look for ways to extend their services by leveraging the latest in technology and offering a best practice approach. White labeling allows banks and service providers to offer a packaged technology solution to build a business faster and at a lower cost. Treasury and Risk Management: Even today many banks continue to run treasury operations on legacy technology. This is often the case when the organization cannot afford resources to implement efficient treasury technology. Many banks are now offering their middle market customers with treasury solutions either by deploying web-based technology for use inside the organization or by leveraging treasury management services. White labeling offers scalable treasury and cash management services that can help banks and service providers enhance their entire product offering. Treasury solutions can range in functionality from basic cash management to more sophisticated operations. Payments Processing: Payments processing is gaining greater attention from organizations. Banks and service providers are finding novel means to expand their array of offerings. White labeling can enable banks or service providers by assisting them in providing a range of payment options. Organizations now look for banking partners for a wide range of solutions such as online e-payments, check printing, routing and outsourced check processing. Advantages of White Labeling The economic climate is in constant flux due to regulatory and other changes. Banking, brokering and other retail financial institutions are witnessing increased activity. White labeling offers a relatively fast and cost-effective alternative for financial institutions to benefit from this growth, without having to invest a considerable amount of time, money and effort into developing their own solution. Time: White labeling can help financial institutions to reduce the time to introduce a new product or product range. Effort: Organizations can widen the variety of products or services they offer without large operational inputs, even if the Provider Banks do not have the necessary knowledge required. Cost: Reduced time to market and reduced requirement of infrastructure and operations to formulate and introduce new products in turn will reduce cost. 8

9 A good example is credit card operations. Smaller banks use larger banks to handle their credit card operations, as they do not have the necessary infrastructure. Another example is white labeled ATMs. These ATMs are owned and operated by third parties and not the banks. They accept debit cards issued by all banks. A provider bank can simply subscribe with the third party at the back-end. This will ensure that cardholders can seamlessly transact using the ATM while the provider bank does not need to install ATMs at all locations. Future of White Labeling The latest generations of white label solutions are products that can be customized as per individual buyer s needs, and then delivered as a service. As white label providers improve their own operations based on the implementation of new technologies, they can pass along service enhancements to their own white label customers. Key trends in white label solutions include suites of sophisticated back office reporting tools, giving customers the capability to gain full intelligence of their trading clients. White label providers must be able to deliver a bespoke solution for each partner, support their business on a daily basis, and grow and evolve with that partner. It needs to be a partnership. Some of the other products and services likely to benefit from white labeling in the corporate banking sector are trade, securities, entitlements, investigations, fund transfers and lockbox images. Conclusion As customers in the financial services sector mature, banks must provide them with diverse and innovative options. However, the costs of innovation and the time taken to introduce the products must be kept to a minimum. An ever-changing economic, regulatory and technological environment adds further difficulties to such innovations. Banks can therefore no longer afford to pursue innovations solely in-house. They must adopt white-labeled financial products. White labeled products have been shown to enhance customer experience in other retail sectors and can surely be used similarly in financial retail. Several renowned banks have already provided a model by secure and successful deployment of white labeling. Banks must adopt white label concepts in all possible situations to open up various opportunities without significant investment of time, money and effort. White label solution providers on the other hand must find faster and cheaper ways of providing customized offerings for each partner for business longevity. It is up to them to adopt the best-suited and available technologies, adapt to the changing environment and help the banks do the same. [1] Business Standard, ICICI Bank to launch white label credit card, April 5, 2006, [2] Business Standard, Tata launches first white-label ATM, June 28, 2013, 9

10 About TCS Business Process Services (BPS) Business Process Services (BPS) at TCS is about managing and executing business operations. Our domain expertise helps deliver core business processing across industries, analytics & insights and support processes such as accounting, HR and supply chain management. TCS partners with customers to accelerate co-transformation, and generates business value for customers through delivery excellence, risk management and through innovative models such as Platform BPS which delivers process as a service. With annual BPS revenues of greater than US$ 1.4 billion, TCS is one of the largest BPS providers with 47,500+ employees servicing 225+ customers across the globe. Contact For more information, please contact us at bpo.imo@tcs.com Subscribe to TCS White Papers TCS.com RSS: Feedburner: About Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) Tata Consultancy Services is an IT services, consulting and business solutions organization that delivers real results to global business, ensuring a level of certainty no other firm can match. TCS offers a consulting-led, integrated portfolio of IT and IT-enabled infrastructure, engineering and TM assurance services. This is delivered through its unique Global Network Delivery Model, recognized as the benchmark of excellence in software development. A part of the Tata Group, India s largest industrial conglomerate, TCS has a global footprint and is listed on the National Stock Exchange and Bombay Stock Exchange in India. For more information, visit us at IT Services Business Solutions Consulting All content / information present here is the exclusive property of Tata Consultancy Services Limited (TCS). The content / information contained here is correct at the time of publishing. No material from here may be copied, modified, reproduced, republished, uploaded, transmitted, posted or distributed in any form without prior written permission from TCS. Unauthorized use of the content / information appearing here may violate copyright, trademark and other applicable laws, and could result in criminal or civil penalties. Copyright 2013 Tata Consultancy Services Limited TCS Design Services I M I 10 I 13