The ReadSoft effect on: Abbey National Bank
Process: Business transaction processes
Segment: Bank/Finance
Country: UK
Abbey National is one of the most prominent banks in Britain, providing mortgages, savings products, personal bank accounts, foreign currency, general insurance and more to 15 million customers in the UK. With such a large customer base, the flow of incoming documents is huge. Abbey National uses ReadSoft’s product for data capture to process large numbers of mortgage forms and other business critical documents.
Staying in touch with almost two million shareholders
In Sheffield in northern England you’ll find Abbey National’s Shareholder Services. This is where the share registry operation is based and registration forms, proxy forms, and dividends are processed in a highly automated fashion. Margaret Grant runs a department that is constantly handling a multitude of forms, together with large volumes of non-standard correspondence.
“Abbey National’s 1.9 million shareholders send us large numbers of letters and forms that we need to process every day. With the recently implemented system we process 400,000 incoming documents a year,” says Margaret Grant.
The most demanding periods for her department take place during spring and autumn, with two share dividends. At this point, accuracy and speed are crucial to the quality of shareholder relations.
Apart from the intensive dividend periods, a constant flow of shareholder information from all over the world is sent to Abbey National. Standard shareholder maintenance such as address changes and proxy forms are some of the documents processed in the system.
“In the earlier days we used barcode technology to capture form types. The rest we had to do manually. With the new system, we capture data along with form types, with the added advantage that we can easily add new form types as required. Furthermore, we benefit from ReadSoft’s free form technology, since we also run unstructured documents through the system with excellent results,” says Brendan O’Loughlin, IT Project Manager at Abbey.
Prior to the installation, processing all this paper meant costly extra personnel and overtime. Now the ReadSoft software scans the documents, extracts the required shareholder information, and transfers the data to Shareholder Services’ host system. For certain forms, the whole process is handled automatically, with very little manual intervention.
Step for the future
“This is really a step into the future for Shareholder Services,” says Brendan O’Loughlin. “We needed to make this move, since the capability supporting the business was somewhat outdated prior to this installation. So last year we explored the market to find the best possible solution and came up with a few suppliers. After evaluating the available technologies, we decided to go with ReadSoft, both for their technology and, to a large extent, for the way they deliver the technology. When it came down to the final decision, it was really the people who made the difference.”
“What I really liked about ReadSoft AB was the fact that no over-ambitious promises were made. Rather, they had a very professional and dedicated motivation to meet our needs,” comments Margaret Grant.
Strong determination to succeed
“It was really very clear that ReadSoft was determined to be successful in the project. Actually, I have never before come across such determination with an external supplier. The ‘trust factor’ is simply very high with ReadSoft. Deciding on ReadSoft’s software has made a substantial difference in our ability to deliver the best possible service to our shareholders. That’s really what this is all about!” finishes Brendan O’Loughlin.