Hampshire Trust Bank

Meeting customer expectations

Hampshire Trust Bank (HTB) is growing rapidly, with payment volumes significantly increasing. As a specialist savings and lending bank, it processes many high-value critical payments for customers. HTB previously used a legacy on-premise solution to ensure that customer service expectations were met, and their payments made on time. Processes were manually intensive and significantly time-consuming for employees.

Choosing the market leader

To transform and implement digital payments effectively, HTB looked at a range of payment solutions available. Robin Jeffery, Director of Transformation, at HTB explains:

“We chose Bottomline’s Payments & Cash Aggregator, PCA, as the product was well suited to support our digital payment transformation. PCA has enabled us to mature our payments infrastructure to deliver the service our customers expect. We are now in a better position to manage the growth we are seeing in payment volumes whilst reducing operational risk and improving resilience.”

HTB’s longstanding investment in API technology, meant they were easily able to integrate the PCA platform into their existing lending and savings systems.

Managing the payment lifecycle

Each of HTB’s lines of business generates respective payment files, which now get automatically uploaded into PCA, alongside any other payments which can be keyed directly into the platform.

Automated workflows ensure that all outwards and inwards payments go through the correct process. All payments are screened with a brand-new integration, directly from PCA into the Comply Advantage AML (anti-money laundering) platform. This screening undertakes all AML and financial crime checks for every single payment transaction. Once checked, PCA then automatically sends each payment on to its destination.

Darren Gill, HTB’s Financial Controller states, “PCA has all the functional capability that we need to process payments accurately. Crucially, it also gives us an audit trail, reconciliation, management information and control – a wealth of payment capabilities for both now and in the future.”

Meeting financial crime obligations

A partnership approach across multiple suppliers was key to delivering a successful outcome. To meet HTB’s high standards and expectations around AML and financial crime compliance, Bottomline developed an integration into Comply Advantage’s transaction screening solution.

Robin Jeffery says, “HTB is the first to bring Bottomline and Comply Advantage, two unique suppliers with different software, together.

PCA gives us a central hub with all our inward and outward payment workflows in one place. We can make our payments efficiently with no messy data hand-offs between different systems. PCA automates and manages both the payment authorisation and screening which means we are not reliant on manual processes or interventions. This has significantly improved the speed of our transactions and created capacity in the operation.

The integration with Comply Advantage, ensures we have a real-time payment screening capability. We can therefore be fully confident that 100% of our payments have gone through the necessary controls and security to help us mitigate risk.”

Collaborating with a true strategic partner

This project has seen HTB strengthen its partnership with Bottomline. Monthly meetings with a customer success manager ensure regular discussion around service, operation and developments.

Robin adds, “We spend time with Bottomline looking at performance and service but also looking ahead at what developments or changes are happening in the market. Listening to Bottomline customers in other industries also gives us better insights that help shape our thinking about future payment initiatives.

What Bottomline brings is much more than just the best payments technology in the market; they are a true strategic partner. We can focus on what we know best, and they take care of the infrastructure which drives our digital payment services. This means we can respond effectively to change rather than react to it.”

Building the right foundational capability

From the outset, our emphasis has been on more than just implementing a new system; everyone was focused on achieving digital payment transformation. Robin concludes, “Payments are a key foundational capability for any bank, and the move to PCA has given us a robust platform for the future. The partnership with Bottomline has given us both industry-leading technology along with a team who have an in-depth understanding of the payments landscape.