Make a Customer Commitment? Be Sure You Honor It

The Big Picture

From marketing materials to official contracts, much information is shared when consumers get a loan – not to mention the commitments that a bank makes to those customers. And not meeting, or inconsistently meeting, those commitments is a surefire way to land in a regulator’s crosshairs.

 As part of an enterprise effort to resolve regulatory findings and drive operational excellence, a top national bank asked Spinnaker Consulting Group to help it identify customer commitments across its student lending business. The bank also needed to develop associated control guidance to ensure those commitments are fulfilled consistently and on time.

The Spinnaker Approach

Our consultants developed and executed a process to comprehensively analyze nearly 900 documents used across the student loan life cycle to identify commitments made by the lender to its customers. The team also incorporated secondary commitments, where the bank must respond after a customer takes a specific action. A methodology was developed and applied to group similar commitments, creating efficiency and simplicity in the process. The last step included the development of control guidance that was intended to drive the bank's response to these commitments.

In total, our team identified 3,300 commitments, then developed and mapped associated control guidance to ensure the bank delivered on its commitments across all channels.

The Client Benefits

Our partnership helped the client strengthen its overall risk management landscape, which included introducing automated reporting so bank leaders could track compliance at a glance. To implement consistent control guidance across every product line, we brought in innovative approaches that saved time and money. The bank is now better positioned to adhere to these commitments, which will improve the customer experience and strengthen the bank’s control environment.

Back on a Compliant Path

Our tailored approach and risk expertise allowed us to deliver a quality solution for a project that involved much nuance across the materials and regulatory expectations. To learn more about how we helped our client strengthen its risk and control environment, check out our case study on Operational Excellence that Ensures Fulfillment of Customer Commitments. 

Contact us to find out how we can help your organization elevate its compliance performance.