First Federal Bank Achieves an Efficient, Accurate Financial Close & Greater Employee Satisfaction
Case Study
Share
Business Drivers to Automate
When First Federal Bank acquired several financial organizations in quick succession, transactions skyrocketed. The bank grew from $500 million to $2 billion in assets and from nine branches to 24 branches. The burden of manual reconciliation processes became overwhelming, and the accounting team worked many extra hours just to keep up. Timeliness, data accuracy and exception management suffered, as did the overworked accounting team. So, the bank implemented Frontier by Trintech.
Brooke Hand, SVP and controller, said, “Our bank thrives on its positive culture and strong focus on customers and employees. The tremendous effort
it took to reconcile accounts using manual processes was not aligned with our approach. It was not efficient or effective for employees to spend so many manual hours on the financial close, when technological solutions exist.”
Reconciling accounts manually and rekeying data left the bank vulnerable to errors, inaccurate data and even fraud. Exceptions took months to research. Using Excel spreadsheets “required countless hours” to reconcile accounts, Hand said. “Every balance sheet for every account had to be manually signed off.”
Now we can see the matches immediately and resolve exceptions much faster, in weeks instead of months.”
Finding Frontier by Trintech
When the bank decided to automate reconciliation, Frontier was a front-runner. But it wasn’t until Hand went to see a bank using Frontier in person that she knew Frontier was the right solution to meet the bank’s reconciliation challenges.
Seeing Frontier in use at another bank allowed her to see how implementing the solution would lead to lower risk and higher productivity.
“We wanted a life outside accounting, and with Frontier, we got our lives back. It’s a great system. Overall, it’s been a smart decision to automate reconciliation, and we want to continue automating to recognize additional benefits.”
Solution in Action
Frontier forms a complete picture of account reconciliation across the organization that makes exceptions instantly visible and reduces or eliminates manual intervention. It minimizes the risk of financial misstatements with transaction-level matching and a full audit trail, driving a faster and more accurate financial close.
With the help of Frontier consultants during a 5-week implementation, the bank set up all daily accounts for automated reconciliation on Frontier, including cash, ACH, ATM, Federal Reserve, daily loan, deposit and savings accounts. Files are imported from the bank’s core.
“Reconciling the daily accounts helps facilitate a timely and accurate financial close,” Hand said. “Now we can see the matches immediately and resolve exceptions much faster, in weeks instead of months.”
The segregation of duties in Frontier Reconciliation means no opportunity for data manipulation. “The auditors like that. From an auditor’s perspective, it’s much better than spreadsheets,” Hand added.
Although the accounting department still has eight employees working on reconciliations, they enjoy the efficiencies created and split their time with more value-added responsibilities.
Read the Full Case Study
Discover key insights and actionable strategies by downloading our full case study.
See Trintech in Action
Seeing is believing. Discover why Trintech is the real leader in financial close automation.
