Fenergo has launched a cut-down and lower cost client lifecycle management tool (CLM) called Fen-Xcelerate. It is targeted at mid-sized and boutique financial institutions and provides an end to end solution promising a rapid deployment with prebuilt workflows and integrations. James Follette, Global Head of Commercial, Business & Retail Banking, Fenergo, commented: “With Fen-Xcelerate, mid-tier and boutique banks can benefit from Fenergo’s deep financial services heritage and best-in-class customer relationship management (CRM), data, screening and ID&V partner integrations in one solution that is tailored for that market. We anticipate the goalposts for digitalisation within these banks to move from 18 months to just weeks.”
Enterprise Times had the chance to ask some questions of Follette about this new solution.
What is Fen-Xcelerate?
Fen-Xcelerate is a cloud-based solution hosted on AWS, Fenergo recently certified as an AWS Financial Services Competency Partner. It provides end-to-end client lifecycle management on a single platform. The solution also includes several prebuilt integrations to applications that Financial Institutions commonly use. These include Salesforce, Refinitiv’s World-Check One, RDC, and DocuSign. There are also tools to integrate to both transaction monitoring tools, the Fenergo customer-facing portal and core banking systems to enable rapid deployment and ROI.
Is this a multi-tenant offering?
Follette replied: “Based on feedback from our client community, we have elected to give each customer their own virtual private cloud.”
While this gives banks clear segregation of data, it also means that the update cycle for each bank is likely slower. However, as the integrations to the core banking systems will probably be unique for each bank, this makes some sense. Is it only available on AWS? What about GCP or Azure?
Follette answered: “Amazon Web Services is our chosen technology partner for providing the Fen-Xcelerate solution. Fenergo is an AWS Financial Services Competency Partner.”
This may disappoint some banks who have existing deals with GCP and Azure. Giving a choice of hyper-scale cloud vendors is becoming more common amongst software vendors. If the number of customers grows for this solution, it will be interesting to see if Fenergo decide to give customers a choice.
Follette does promise that the solution is available from any location, stating:
“Fen-Xcelerate is available in all major AWS regions, Fen-Xcelerate will be located geographically close to clients to ensure optimum performance.”
What does the solution do?
Fen-Xcelerate offers a complete solution for smaller financial institutions. It includes:
- Fully managed cloud service in partnership with AWS
- One consolidated solution for digital transformation
- Industry-validated rules engine covering regulations in 100+ jurisdictions
- Centralised data and document management
- Option to add additional integration modules, such as transaction monitoring
- Automated KYC, AML, Counter-Terrorist Financing (CTF) compliance
To deploy the solution, Fenergo will turn to its partner ecosystem including IBM, Salesforce, Accenture, PWC, Cap Gemini, DXC Technology and Luxoft. The initial deployment will only take between six and twelve weeks. Fen-Xcelerate includes the automation of straight-through processing with the ability to manage risk by exception. The reduction in processing times for things like account opening increases both efficiency and customer satisfaction.
Fen-Xcelerate deployment and cost
While the press release says, Fen-Xcelerate is a lower-cost solution, it does not state the likely cost. Enterprise Times asked Follette to clarify.
“Excluding implementation, the starting price for the core platform is €180k – €300K, this pricing is contingent on usage and what additional modules our clients would like to activate. The complexity of a clients existing ecosystem and desired level of customisation will also have an impact on price.”
Fenergo estimates that an implementation will achieve a 300% return on investment within three years, subject to the level of customisation. Customisation is something that most banks should aim to limit. Banks will need to customise some interfaces to core banking solutions. The less customisation the faster it is to implement, and the easier is to upgrade as Fenergo brings out new features for this solution. Financial Institutions can contribute to that feature roadmap through the Fenergo community.
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
This is a smart move by Fenergo. It already provides a feature-rich CLM solution to larger financial institutions. As the solution grew more complex it became less attractive to smaller institutions. It can now address that market with a standardised out-of-the-box implementation that contains many of the features that its core solution does.
Adam Kupperman, Global Head of Partnerships, RDC, said: “The ability for such banks to incorporate market-leading risk screening, transaction monitoring, ID&V and information solutions is a challenge, as most do not desire to integrate standalone solutions, plug them independently into their technology stack and try to make the whole ecosystem operate seamlessly together. The beauty of Fen-Xcelerate is that Fenergo provides customers with a seamlessly integrated platform for Know Your Customer (KYC) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) processes, including RDC’s best-in-class customer and third-party risk screening capabilities.”
Fenergo is aiming to capture a bigger slice of the global market with this offering. These multiple deployment options will provide the lower latency that local installation can offer. It also lowers the compliance barrier for personal data. Fenergo claims that the data centre locations are suitable for more than 100 jurisdictions.
