How to prepare a clearing account for audit in only 15 minutes

Find out how a leading non-bank mortgage servicer streamlined the clearing reconciliation process with Integra INVESTOR.

Using Integra INVESTOR to automate clearing account reconciliation, a top-20 non-bank mortgage servicer has substantially improved efficiency, consolidated operations, and introduced critical operational controls.

Results

  • 50%: Reduction in FTE’s required to complete the process
  • 89%: Payment clearing transaction automatically matched by the system
  • 3: Number of checks manually cleared per day, instead of 400+
  • 30: Hours required to train a new FTE on the new process
  • 15: Minutes it takes to prepare an account for audit, instead of weeks

Challenge

The company’s clearing reconciliation process required 5 FTE’s to manage 7 accounts using spreadsheet solutions that offered limited quality control. And because there was no formalized process for clearing reconciliation, training new staff took several weeks. Each clearing account also came with its own specific challenges. For example, payment clearing required coordination of data from multiple sources and presented an unmanageable daily transaction volume. Disbursement clearing involved multiple touchpoints and heavy manual intervention, resulting in higher risk of errors.

Solution

Implementation of Integra INVESTOR resulted in multiple key benefits:

  • The application-based process brings standardization and visibility. Introducing a single application was key to centralizing the function in one department and standardizing the process. Furthermore, the system’s workflow capabilities ensure easy oversight of the entire process.
  • Automation streamlines several aspects of the process. Thanks to automated data gathering and matching, analysts no longer spend time on tedious, error-prone tasks like collecting bank statements or manually entering data.
  • Built-in controls ensure processing integrity. The clearing reconciliation process no longer poses an audit concern, since built-in controls prevent unauthorized changes to data; timestamp analysts’ work; and keep analysts from submitting unbalanced reconciliations.
  • Audit preparation requires considerably less time. With Integra INVESTOR, preparing for an audit now requires about fifteen minutes. Analysts simply print or export the appropriate reports directly from the application.