NBQ (National Bank of Umm Al Quwain) has been a leading financial institution in the UAE. They manage an extensive amount of escrow accounts, particularly under the real estate sector monit...
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NBQ (National Bank of Umm Al Quwain) has been a leading financial institution in the UAE. They manage an extensive amount of escrow accounts, particularly under the real estate sector monitored by the Real Estate Regulatory Agency (RERA) & Umm Al Quwain.
Consequently, with the increase in business, real estate market in the UAE and stricter compliance guidelines by the regulators, the bank’s escrow business expanded manifold, but the supporting operational processes were largely manual, fragmented, scattered and data intensive. So, the bank had to maintain different systems to operate their escrow business. Thus, NBQ escrow account automation was very important.
Challenges faced by NBQ in Escrow Operations
Regulatory Compliance:
There were new RERA regulatory guidelines being introduced on a large scale. It required on point data handling, regular reporting/ monitoring and accountability between the bank, the regulator & the customer.
Manual Operations:
All the processes related to the escrow accounts were manual. Undoubtedly, from onbarding the customers, escrow accounts & the projects, handling their inflows and outflows, monitoring the month end reconciliation & managing manual reportings for the regulators, all of it was manual. This manual process was consuming a lot of time and leading to inefficiencies.
Data Management Complexity:
The huge amount of transaction and project data were stored across multiple systems and this made it difficult for NBQ to achieve a central and real-time repository of operations.
Need for Automation & Accuracy:
NBQ wanted to zero down the manual errors, reduce the processing time and master complete automation while maintaining total compliance with RERA & Umm Al Quwain standards.
NBQ wanted to integrate the multiple systems like the bank, regulators, and customers in one platform because this would have helped them in managing the entire workflow from a central point and day to day operations could run smoothly with real time updates.
Solution: NBQ Escrow Automation in 7 Days
To address these problems, NBQ took help from Ascent Risk & Resilience. Undeniably, our product autoEscrow 5.0, a comprehensive escrow management solution crafted a solution for regulatory and operational excellence.
In just 7 days, autoEscrow successfully mitigated and integrated NBQ’s huge escrow data into the autoESCROW application. This guaranteed instant prominence and control across all escrow projects.
Key Highlights of NBQ Escrow Automation
Complete Automation: All the processes of NBQ bank were automated. autoEscrow system integrated with core banking through the APIs where all the customer and account related information can be directly fetched in just one click.
Basically, account onboarding, customer onboarding, management of inflows, real time fetching of deposits into the system, transaction categorization and payment processing from the autoEscrow system, were fully automated.
For the 1st time, Ascent developed the regulator portal for the Umm Al Quwain regulator. The developer portal had the entire workflow from customer onboarding, regulatory compliance checks, regulator approvals to banking operations.
Central Operation Library: Their customer, project and transaction level data came in a centralized repository because all of it was migrated to one place & excel templates were replaced. So, operations could be handled from autoEscrow application.
Regulator Integration: Ascent provided extended support to ensure regulatory compliance. Altogether, we developed interfaces for both the Regulator Portal and Developer Portal for a seamless workflow of the escrow operations.
Rapid Deployment: The complete setup of the bank application was therefore, deployed within a week.
Results: Reduction in Manual Work & Operational Efficiency
NBQ witnessed 90% reduction in manual effort and data reconciliation time.
The bank also saw improved compliance with Umm Al Quwain & RERA regulatory frameworks. Real-time reporting and audit-ready data were used.
There was increased accountability. Secure and searchable transaction history improved the stakeholder’s trust.
Operational efficiency was achieved because automated receivables and payments reduced turnaround time by over 60%.
The processes at NBQ became scalable. It guaranteed that NBQ could handle larger volumes of escrow business without additional manpower.
Conclusion
From a physical and scattered process, NBQ revolutionized its escrow operations into a fully automated and regulator-compliant system with autoEscrow. The execution smoothened data management and reporting. It also empowered NBQ’s position as a trusted escrow service provider aligned with the evolving RERA standards of Umm Al Quwain.
Discover how Ascent’s autoEscrow can transform your regulatory operations. Schedule a Free Demo Now!
