As a result of the financial crisis that occurred during 2007-2008 among banks and mortgage lenders, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act in 2010.
A massive piece of financial reform, Dodd-Frank sought to enact oversight of the financial industry. Affected institutions were given a few years to implement its requirements. With a goal to keep a closer watch on the industry, it sought to prevent another taxpayer bailout in any future crisis.
I was able to assist TD Bank to implement the necessary reporting system to meet these new regulations. As a note, TD Bank was my very first client when I started Gilman Patrick over eight years ago, and my first independent project.
TD Bank, America’s Most Convenient Bank
Historical Background: TD Bank ranks in the top 10 banks in North America and serves over 26 million customers worldwide.
TD stands for Toronto-Dominion. Based on Toronto, Canada, TD Bank was established in 1855. A subsidiary of the Toronto-Dominion Bank of Toronto, Canada, it operates about 1,200 branches on the East Coast of the United States that spans from Maine to Florida. Today it boasts over 15 million online and mobile customers.
Situation: TD Bank needed to implement a Dodd-Frank reporting system quickly to meet federal deadlines and regulatory compliance. A project team, technologies and advisors were selected and organized.
Bringing TD Bank Into Compliance with Dodd-Frank
Problem: Axiom technology that needed to be implemented inventoried Dodd-Frank reports using a random, non sensical titling system. It was expected that people would use a search engine to find reports and thus no file structure or naming conventions were necessary. However, an increasing inventory of reports made this pile of strangely named reports unworkable. Staff could not find reports without great effort, time…and frustration. It was impossible to audit as well. Something needed to change and quickly.
Advice: Replace the system-generated report naming system with an “old school” naming convention designed so that staff could find reports easily via tables of contents and name indexing. I created a named report title system for categorizations into a table of contents and a dating/naming system for indexing reports. This allowed staff to quickly find a report by type, then by date within the type.
Action: By trial and error, I created and implemented the new naming convention, as well as some negotiations to get the system right. Once established, anyone could find a report by name and date.
However, modifying the technology to create titles using our new naming convention required increased project expenses, time, and effort. People needed to manually change every report name until the system automated the process.
Outcome: These efforts paid handsomely with an efficient and easy-to-use reporting system.
As report inventories increased, the benefits became more and more obvious:
- thousands of labor hours were saved
- there was a significant human-error reduction and increased reliability.
Patrick Martin is an industry expert in banking technology, deciphering the elements that work collectively towards progress – and building a roadmap for successful execution.
Contact him today to see how he can use his innovative strategies and industry expertise to help your organization.