Bill McFarland

Community Leader

The back office is no longer about paper … it's process and systems

For years, deposit operations professionals have been asked to do more with less. As banks grew substantially during boom times, back office deposit staffs did not follow suit. Instead, this team struggled to support new products, mergers and regulations with a rapid-fire smattering of new policies, workarounds and standalone tracking systems. Efforts have begun to modernize the deposit back office, but this work is far from done. As we enter a new era in banking, the time has clearly come for banks to take advantage of key enabling back office technologies, including imaging or "ECM" systems, workflow management systems, fraud analytic systems and Web technology. More and more, deposit operations departments are becoming internal "service centers" held accountable for responsiveness, accuracy, risk mitigation and efficiency.

Participants in The Cornerstone Report's Deposit Operation Community will receive specific staffing benchmark comparisons as well as critical cost comparisons for the bank's item processing function. We will also help you understand how well your bank is leveraging systems compared to peers and provide emerging best practices for achieving the highest levels of operational excellence in your back office functions.

We hope you join us in participating in this industry-leading resource for achieving high performance in your deposit operations functions.

Driving down an efficiency ratio, quickly integrating acquisitions, and differentiating the bank in the market with outstanding customer service all rely on a high-caliber back office function. Only those with carefully designed processes, systems and staff have a chance of meeting these expanding demands in bank operations. We hope you will join with us in the creation of this industry-leading resource for efficiently scaling up your bank's Deposit Operations function.

Below are select metrics that will be collected for the survey and used, upon completion of the study, to benchmark your institution against median, 25th percentile and 75th percentile study findings.