6 Must-Haves When Looking for a Dispute Process Automation Solution

Another day and another wave of fraud-related payment disputes arrives . . . your back office is already struggling to keep up with regular demands, possibly missing Reg E deadlines. Payment disputes processing at your organization is increasingly pulling staff away from important customer care and revenue generating activities. Hiring more people is not an option . . . automation can help, but how do you get started?

Compliance process automation is a technology approach to replacing paper-intensive, manual systems and repetitive tasks by creating a digital and automated process to improve compliance, transparency and manage costs. Automating high-volume, repetitive tasks in accordance with banking regulatory requirements reduces demands on staff training and often improves compliance outcomes.

For banking organizations, several important processes related to Reg E compliance can be automatically-handled using compliance automation including:

• Automatic letter generation from tailored templates
• Auto-Calculation of Provisional Credit
• Associated General Ledger Updates

Here is a checklist of the most important characteristics FIs use in evaluating a technology partner:

Checklist for Choosing the Payment Dispute Automation Partner 

• Data integration
• Banking-centric and compliance-based automation
• Digital end-to-end processing enabled
• Scalable with no limit on number of users
• Cloud-hosted, PCI/DSS compliant
• Reporting and data analytics

Take a closer look at how these features improve dispute processing in the back office:

1. Data Integration

Data integration with leading core processing systems transforms dispute intake and  reduces the implementation lift for your IT team. Look for solution providers that have experience working with leading core processors and can provide experience-based insight on core data integration with the automation partner.

2. Banking-Centric and Compliance-Based Automation

Process automation software may be used in a variety of industries; and some providers may simply try to overlay an automation solution created for an entirely different business than banking operations. Banking operations must meet mandated, regulatory standards in processing payment disputes. By selecting vendors that have experience in process automation built around banking compliance, any workflow automations are pre-built, assuring the automation solution will address compliance-related needs.

3. Digital end-to-end processing enabled

Using a robust payment dispute solution, the dispute process can be digitized and viewed within a dashboard for easy retrieval, reporting and management analysis. The elimination of manual and disparate systems means that all information, decisions and actions are digital and accessible in a central repository for increased data security, transparency and convenience.

4. Scalable with no limit on number of users

Any robust compliance process automation solutions should accommodate normal increases in claim volume, while easily handling spikes in dispute activity. Controlled organization-wide access is very important to enable more thorough intake, quality customer service and better dispute management and oversight; so look for solutions that offer an unlimited number of users. 

Back office staff can centrally manage compliance, manage fraud and improve internal communications using a central portal and repository of dispute information. A centralized data repository provides enterprise-wide visibility leading to better management of compliance tasks, actions, timeline records and reporting. When all authorized staff can refer to a single source it reduces the time and energy required to manage deadlines and provide customers updates on disputes. Communication with all relevant parties to the dispute is improved from the customer, back office to the institution’s regulatory compliance team.

5. Cloud-hosted, PCI/DSS, SOC 2 Type II Compliant

The process automation solution should be offered as a cloud-hosted and PCI/DSS compliant platform. Cloud-hosted SaaS solutions are designed for scalability to address increases and surges in payment dispute workflows; while keeping processes within compliance-mandated timelines and requirements. The attestation of the solution provider meeting the PCI DSS and SOC 2 Type II security and compliance standards, gives financial institutions more assurance that account holder card information is securely handled and meets compliance requirements.

6. Reporting and data analytics

Back office operations that rely heavily on manual processes or disconnected information databases face long, tedious preparation activities prior to a compliance audit. An automation solution that offers not only a simplified process, but also a centralized, accessible view of completed dispute resolution workflows and decisions is a huge time saver. Additionally, process workflow information can be useful to operations management in making staffing decisions regarding training and workload balance to optimize performance. Look for dispute automation solutions that offer reporting and analysis tools that streamline audit preparation and provide meaningful information for operations management.

Transitioning from manual and slow to digital and streamlined can transform your dispute resolution operations. Automation delivers freedom from the disconnected manual dispute tracking methods involving paper, email and spreadsheets. Instead, dispute processing is performed with greater accuracy, speed and transparency and compliance preparation is streamlined. Once FI teams experience it, they tell us it is a game-changer for the back office.

Contact FINBOA today for a personalized demo of our Payments Disputes automation solution designed for the banking back office.