The financial services industry has many obligations when it comes to customer communications. You must remain compliant with regulations. Additionally, you need to ensure that the right person gets the correct information. Further, you need your customers to take action, based on the communication. With all these requirements, it can be expensive and hard to manage financial printing.
That’s why many financial institutions turn to outsourcing. It can provide various benefits that support both the organization and its customers. If you’re reconsidering your financial printing operations, find out why it’s time to outsource with a transactional mail partner.
5 Reasons to Outsource Financial Printing Compliance and Mail
There are many compelling reasons to adopt an outsourcing model for your financial printing compliance. Here are the top reasons that it makes sense.
Cut Costs Across Many Areas
If you currently manage print and mail in-house, you’re well aware of the expense of having an in-plant. These costs will continue to rise, as you have to keep equipment up-to-date, pay employees more, and deal with material cost increases like paper.
You have capital expenses like the printers and inserters, which can cost millions of dollars. Then you have labor costs as well as operating ones, including rent, energy, software, security, and more. It’s a never-ending cost category that isn’t likely to decrease. You’ll be paying all those fees regardless if you print volume is going down or if you’re operating or not.
When you outsource, your financial communications become a much lower operating cost. All the expenses related to running an in-plant disappear from the balance sheet. You’ll also enjoy better pricing on postage and materials because professional printers have scale that a single company could never reach.
With these savings, you’ll be able to reinvest those dollars into your business that can support growth and revenue generation.
Engage Customers with Personalized Messaging
Financial printing compliance of statements and other communications don’t have to be strictly business. Information about accounts, disclaimers, and disclosures are all critical. You also have the chance to message more directly to each individual.
When you outsource to a business that applies the white paper factory (WPF) approach, you tap into the ability to print dynamically. The WPF process involves feeding white rolls of paper into a high-speed inkjet printer that prints directly from the information in the file. That can change on each page. You also can do this in color to stand out.
Here’s a scenario that illustrates the capability. Typical retail banks offer lots of products to consumers, from checking accounts to credit cards to loans. You can cross-sell to your customers based on what services they currently have. So, the person with just a checking account could see messaging around opening a credit card or savings account.
Improve Accuracy with the Most Advanced Technology
In financial printing compliance, accuracy is everything. It has to be right. Unfortunately, that can be challenging without the right technology. If your current error rate results in even a few errors or mis-mailings, that’s too much risk. As a result, you could face regulatory fines, litigation, and reputational harm.
So, how does outsourcing boost accuracy? There are two key reasons that outsourcing improves accuracy.
First, it’s the technology. Every piece of paper printed is tracked using a barcode. It’s scanned and recorded on camera, ensuring it’s inserted into the correct envelope. There is a record of every piece of mail, so it’s easy to investigate if issues arise.
Second, are the processes that transactional printers use. For example, we implemented Lean Manufacturing. In doing so, we have hundreds of standard works that break down every process into tasks. We continually audit these to find ways to improve, resulting in greater accuracy.
Remain Compliant with Outsourcing and Enhance Data Security
The fourth advantage of outsourcing your financial communications is remaining compliant. In transactional mail, every communication has to be compliant. There are no exceptions. While your financial institution is well versed in this, you may still run into challenges internally.
When you work with a compliance-focused printer, you’ll find that they are just as serious about it as you are, maybe more so. They should be FISMA and PCI DSS compliant at a minimum. The leaders in the industry have full-time compliance officers and go above and beyond regulatory standards, earning SOC I & II compliance.
Coupled with compliance is data security. Financial organizations are favorite targets for cyber-attacks because of the sensitive data they own. If you outsource, you need to have confidence that your printer adheres to the strictest protocols around data exchange, including using encryption, intrusion monitoring, secure APIs, and firewalls. Additionally, they need to have physical security measures in place to limit access.
Upgrade Business Continuity Strategies
The financial industry understands the importance of redundancy. You have consumers to serve and regulators to satisfy, so there’s no time for downtime. But are you carrying this perspective to print and mail? What happens if you have to halt operations? How will these delays impact your customers?
These are the types of questions that may keep you up at night. Outsourcing to partner, who has already addressed these issues, can certainly put them to rest. That’s because transactional printers are business continuity-focused. They do this by having multiple locations that operate with the same processes and protocols. Should a natural disaster impact one facility, the other is ready to go.
Financial Printing Compliance: Outsourcing to Save, Engage, and Protect
With all these advantages of outsourcing, it’s a very attractive business opportunity. You can reduce costs while improving quality, compliance, security, and engagement. Your ideal partner is PCI Group. We serve many financial clients, printing and mailing statements, tax forms, checks, privacy mailings, and much more. Explore our financial services capabilities today.
