OVERVIEW
Our client is a global bank providing consumers, corporations, governments, and institutions with a broad range of financial services and products.
BACKGROUND
An EU country’s government made an agreement with the bank to administer their pension programme to citizens residing outside the country.
THE CHALLENGE
It was necessary to scale up multilingual resources with the capacity to support 350,000 weekly pension payments to global banking customers—handle related queries and ensure pension payments are received by the country’s citizens globally.
Under this government agreement, the bank needed to reduce the volume of fraudulent and improper pension payments—and drive significant improvements in pension customer support.
As banks remain vulnerable to identity fraud, they face immense pressure to provide reliable and satisfying customer experiences.
THE SOLUTION
The bank opted to outsource the pension payments scheme. Partnering with a trusted outsourcing provider with proven expertise in payments and customer support, the bank would be able to refocus on its core banking business, confident its pension customers would receive a high-quality service.
Equally, the approved vendor would need to demonstrate a solid understanding of the legislative and regulatory framework surrounding the project. Governance and regulatory controls must safeguard pensions, with accurate systems and data records to prevent improper or incorrect payments.
Selected as the outsourcing provider, Covalen’s expertise in regulatory compliance is underpinned by CBI regulations and ISO9001 accreditation for the provision of outsourced Customer Support.
Covalen designed and delivered a global outsourced solution for banking customer support—releasing payments to the customer base of more than 350,000 pensioners across 140 countries in 6 languages: English, Italian, Spanish, French, German, and Portuguese.
Covalen is responsible for handling payment-related queries and ensuring payments are received by the country’s citizens abroad.
Driving technology enablement, Covalen redesigned processes to transfer customer engagement to lower-cost channels; email, self-service IVR and web-portal absorbing 30% of customer calls resulting in service cost reductions to the client.
Implementing strict security measures, Covalen effectively monitors and manages compliance, data protection, and information security, using specific fraud and risk prevention tools.
Over the course of the long-term partnership Covalen was awarded additional projects including trade sales, corporate client onboarding, electronic banking support, and supply chain finance support.
KEY OUTCOMES
- 1000+ calls/emails handled daily
- Consistently exceeded Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) targets, delivering a seamless customer experience
- Created a secure and regulated environment to utilise client systems
- Delivered a one-third reduction in the number of improper payments leveraging fraud and risk prevention tools
- Transitioned from costly to cost-effective channels i.e., telephone to email, web and self-serve
- Achieved significant cost reductions via automated ‘self-service’ that absorbed 30% of queries
- Reached a 70% reduction in operating costs
