ABN AMRO serves retail, private and commercial banking clients in the Netherlands and across the globe with a comprehensive range of products and services. The Amsterdam-based bank also offers national and international advisory services. ABN AMRO’s top priority is to provide the best possible service to meet its clients’ ever-changing needs in ever-changing market conditions.
The Challenge: Reducing Compliance Risk and Automating Manual Processes
ABN AMRO had two major challenges to address. First, the bank wanted to strengthen its ability to comply with regulations governing anti-money laundering, counter terrorism, and other criminal activities. This meant improving its insight into the corporate directors and Ultimate Beneficial Ownership of its customers and potential customers. ABN AMRO also wanted to strengthen its ability to identify Politically Exposed Persons (PEPs), as well as organizations and institutions on sanction lists, so the company could reduce its compliance and reputational risk.
ABN AMRO’s other goal was to enhance and automate its SAP system with data for the company’s Procure2Pay Department. The bank’s current processes involved a lot of manual work, resulting in increased costs for vendor management and handling of accounts payable. ABN AMRO needed an integrated solution that included automated workflow capabilities triggering tasks and emails.
The Solution: Master Data Management for Reliable, Up-to-Date Data
To address the first challenge, ABN AMRO turned to Dun & Bradstreet for the capabilities to cleanse its data and create a Global Beneficial Ownership database. Dun & Bradstreet also enhanced ABN AMRO’s screening capabilities with advanced and more customized monitoring from Dun & Bradstreet partner, Regulatory DataCorp (RDC), combining data, intelligence, and analytics to monitor and provide risk alerts.
To address the second challenge, ABN AMRO implemented D&B Connect, a process management platform that integrates with SAP, allowing the bank to monitor business partners in SAP’s ERP environment. Among D&B Connect’s capabilities, it enables the bank to perform robust Master Data Management to identify double entries, updates entries, and creates new entries. It also links internal information with external payment systems and helps users make credit decisions for global transactions in seconds based on individual rules. It can also support compliance by identifying PEPs and checking individuals and businesses against sanction lists.
Results & ROI: Enhanced Customer Insight and Services
ABN AMRO’s increased insight into the complex ownership structures of global businesses enables the bank to comply more efficiently with the demands of regulatory authorities, significantly reducing the bank’s risk. The bank can also respond more quickly to internal requests for customer information.
In addition, the process for screening customers and making changes in the bank’s risk portfolio has been significantly streamlined for the bank and its customers. And the instant access to reliable business data enables rapid credit checks and improved customer service.