Bounce Back Loans

It is an understatement to say that 2020 was an incredibly challenging year. One of the most heart-breaking elements has been the number of people whose livelihoods have been severely affected and the impact on the businesses they have worked so hard to build up.

Although incredibly stressful there has been some support available: the ‘Bounce Back Loan’

scheme. This in itself generated a number of challenges for banks:

Most banks were closed for new business

Banking operational teams were already stretched due to the impact of Covid

Applications needed to be assessed very quickly

Heightened risk of abuse/fraud

It was imperative that these funds were released to the right businesses on a timely basis enabling them to continue trading, protecting thousands of very sound but vulnerable ventures and all the people that supported them.

For some fast growing UK banks there was a huge demand from businesses desperate to access the crucial support essential to their survival. This unprecedented increase in demand created extra pressure on existing teams that were already coping with numerous other important demands.

Solution

• We rapidly mobilised a large team of experienced analysts to work along side the bank’s team. Our approach of deploying a full team, not just individuals, reduced the bank’s management overhead. We immediately took responsibility for quality and productivity, agreeing service level agreements and key performance indicators to give the bank certainty over the quality and price of the project.

• The team we deployed included experienced analysts to perform the tasks, team leaders to

  support the teams, our own trainers to minimise the impact on the bank’s resource and a delivery lead to provide oversight to the project and ensure that all agreed targets were met.

• The team were agile and adapted to different business lines ensuring the bank had support where it was most needed.

• The approach we agreed with the bank included our analysts taking responsibility for the lower risk cases. This allowed the team to get accustomed to the systems and policies and procedures and allowing the internal team to focus on higher risk cases. The Nexus AML team worked closely with the internal teams and quickly took responsibility for medium and finally high-risk cases. This was made possible with the fantastic co-operation from and communication with the bank.

The Result

1. The bank was able to provide significantly higher volumes of support to their clients and consequently provide livelihood saving loans to those in need.

2. Reduced the bank’s management cost per case and gave them certainty over the quality of the project.

3. We are so proud of the contribution our team continues to make in securing the future of the people that benefited from these loans.