The Risks of Manual Banking Processes

Uncovering the hidden risks of manual processes for business banking, and how to modernise your finance operations.

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Calculate the costs for your business

Whilst manual banking processes are seen as “free to use” the true cost to your business will probably shock you.

Some of these include:

Human resource cost for manually managing the payment process via bank portals

Costs associated with human-error/mistakes made via manual payment processing

The costs associated with internal and external fraud

80%

of businesses surveyed in our Drive to Digital 2022 Report are still using bank portals to make payments and retrieve statements.

57%

had a turnover of at least £100m and most were global organisations.

Why is this concerning? Manual banking processes are not designed for corporate finance.

Personal Banking

Safe

Online banking has multiple levels of security that make it safe and convenient to use, with the sole reason for its secure nature being the fact that only the user has access to their personal account.

Business Banking

Unsafe

Sharing access to banking portals with multiple people across the finance team is not an ideal solution because bank portals are not equipped to manage finances securely across multiple users.

The real problem with Manual Banking Processes

Giving your employees access to your company’s bank portal has become the norm, but as technology moves on, it should no longer be acceptable.

In order to mitigate risk across your finance operations, removing the reliance on bank portals is the crucial first step.

Why? Because by using bank portals, you’re giving one individual total control over your company’s financial data. With little to no control over their actions, and the inability to successfully audit when and who is making payments, businesses are struggling to stay complaint with regulatory measures.

There is also an increased risk of error, fraud or theft, and you’re leaving these processes open to greater malicious activities such as hacking, identity theft and phishing.

For corporates, bank portals are the wrong use case. Here’s why:

Inefficient

Manually logging in and making payments is time intensive and a tedious manual task for a finance professional.

Lack of control

Increased risk of fraudulent activity with little to no control over who is making a payment, or the accuracy of a payment.

Chance of human-error

Increased risk of mistakes and inaccurate payments through the manual entry of data.

Incompatible payment files

Back-office systems often produce payment files that are not compatible with bank portals which can be resource heavy & time intensive for the finance team.

Manual reporting

Reporting on payment statuses and statement retrieval data can take hours to process, involves complex spreadsheets, and is error prone.

Bank connectivity options

Banks offer a range of different connections which can replace the use of banking portals by connecting your back-office directly to your primary bank accounts. Not only does a direct connection remove the need for manually processing but helps keep transaction costs low.

Depending on the type of payments you make, there’s a bank connectivity option that will work for you.

UK Domestic Payments

Cross-border Payments

→ Bacs

→ SWIFT L2BA

→ Faster Payments

→ SEPA

→ CHAPS

→ Host-to-Host

Did you know?

You can connect via a traditional SFTP (Secure File Transfer Protocol) connection, or a new API connection which offers a fully embedded experience. Both methods are a viable alternative to banking portals, however the APIs are considered to be the future.

They can be fully configured by the corporate client to integrate directly with compatible back-office applications, or managed through a 3rd party connectivity provider like us.

AccessPay; One platform, One Solution

We eliminate the complexity of a bank connectivity. Our managed bank connectivity solutions can connect all your back-end systems to your banks and payments rails, all through a single system. Plus, have relationships with banks across the globe – so you can benefit from our pre-existing connections to ensure seamless implementation of your project.

Chris Allison

Project Manager, Admiral

We spoke with our bank, and they recommended AccessPay as the preferred solution. We also spoke with other insurance providers, and everybody recommended you, which is highly commendable.

Christopher Davies

Treasury Risk Manager, NSG

AccessPay is secure which is a big advantage to the group as it reduces the opportunity for fraud and any operational error in inputting files correctly.