First Ukrainian International Bank
Leading Ukrainian bank enhances services, improves efficiencies and sets itself up for future scalability by digitizing content.
The challenge
An excess of disordered paper documents proves challenging and archaic
The First Ukrainian International Bank (FUIB) is one of the leading banks in Ukraine, with a focus on providing top-quality customer service, customized banking offerings and innovation for both individuals and businesses.
Established in 1991, the bank is headquartered in the country’s capital city, Kyiv. With over 7,000 employees, the company serves 1.7 million private clients and 110,000 corporate clients. Despite the testing times that the country is currently facing, FUIB strives to remain a stable and reliable bank for its customers, constantly improving its processes for their convenience and safety.
Alongside this already significant challenge, the company was also looking to modernize its processes and move to a paperless approach to business.
As a large, legacy financial institution with over 20 years in service, the bank had generated a vast array of paper documents that formed a key part of the company’s processes. All of this content was highly disparate — it had been created by numerous channels within the organization, was based in varying locations and created in differing formats.
This situation was causing major frustrations for users and was also holding the company back from its ambitious plans to digitally transform. In order to simplify and modernize processes for both employees and customers, FUIB needed to transition to a company-wide, paperless approach. This meant implementing a system that could store electronic documents, giving users the ability to track and trace paper documents, then transfer them to a unified repository.
Being based in a country that was at war, embracing a paperless approach also came with the additional benefit of reducing the risk of physical documents getting lost or destroyed. It also meant that the superior customer experience that the bank prides itself on could be maintained, despite the trying times the country was experiencing.
“Such a document storage and management system did not exist at our bank,” said Illia Morozov, tech owner at FUIB. “The team was therefore searching for a solution that would allow them to systematize and efficiently manage large volumes of electronic documents, reuse them in different processes and provide secure access for authorized personnel.”
Lack of a comprehensive and centralized system leads to delays, increased risk and lost time
The bank lacked a proper system for centralized management of client documents. Instead, there were several different systems with their own integration protocols. It was clear that the absence of a document management system was having an impact on the operations of this rapidly developing bank and its employees.
“One of the most significant challenges we faced in our ambition to go paperless was effectively systematizing and managing large volumes of documents in both physical and electronic formats,” Morozov said.
The previous setup led to delays in processing requests from both clients and regulators. At the same time, the significant amount of manual document handling consumed a lot of time, increased operational risks, and affected the ability to serve customers quickly and efficiently. It also resulted in increased expenditure.
Another challenge was that the various different systems, platforms and approaches to document storage complicated the search and reuse of the same client documents across different business processes and bank channels.
Different business units used their own local solutions for document handling and storage. This hindered the reuse of documents between business units and led to inefficiencies in processing client requests.
7,000+
Employees
1.8 million
Clients
30 million
Documents
The solution
Hyland delivers open-source scalability for centralised document storage and management
FUIB needed a solution that could centralize document storage, provide secure access to authorized users with a unified integration protocol and enable scalability for future growth.
On its quest to select the best solution provider, the bank’s expert commission conducted an analysis of potential options. The requirements for the document management system also included several mandatory features.
With the teams’ sights set on the bank’s future digital transformation efforts, it was essential that the tool came with the ability to scale and accommodate the business’ ambitious future plans for growth. As a company that prioritizes and prides itself on innovation, the new approach needed to fit seamlessly into the existing ecosystem and be implemented quickly to avoid disruption to key services.
In addition, the technological stack of the platform had to align with the bank's stack, with built-in auditing functionality and ready-to-use APIs for core document operations. Another key consideration was customization and the ability to create additional platform modules for content management across the document life cycle.
To address the needs of the entire bank and fulfill these requirements, FUIB selected Hyland’s open-source solution, the Nuxeo Platform, for a number of reasons.
“The advantage of Nuxeo lies in its open-source solution: It is cross-platform and has scalability potential to meet the needs of the entire bank. We also took note of positive references and prompt implementation timelines. Nuxeo met all evaluation criteria, including the ability to be configured internally with available resources,” Morozov added.
With so many documents to organize and manage, Hyland’s Nuxeo Studio solution was needed — and quickly. The tool was brought in and able to rapidly configure various document storage schemas, with an automation service that could customize the functionality of Nuxeo's standard APIs.
By implementing Nuxeo as the platform for our document management system, we continued the digitization of key bank processes and improved them. This led to an enhancement in the quality of service for our clients and improved efficiency in the interaction among our employees.
— Illia Morozov, Tech Owner, First Ukrainian International Bank
The implementation
The FUIB team began with a trial archive for retail clients called "UCB." The transition was then implemented in the bank’s customer service software in branches, before being expanded through a mobile application. Now, Nuxeo holds 30 million documents with a monthly organic growth of 500,000 documents. This reduced time and energy spent on manual data entry and uploads, while increasing accuracy.
Unlike the previous system, where documents needed to be created from scratch, implementing Hyland allowed workers to develop services for auto-generating documents. This also gives teams the ability to store important templates for content directly on the platform, saving time in creating standard documents. Front-line staff also found shifting the focus from physical documents to electronic assets was a simple process to adapt to.
Previously the company’s wide range of documents and assets existed in silos, with no uniform location or format. The electronic archive "MoSt" (more than storage) streamlined the access and exchange of client documents across different departments.
The company’s workers are now able to store and centrally manage a much more diverse range of content, including electronic documents, images and other digital assets. This means employees can take advantage of the full capabilities of the Hyland tool and that customers are getting the best possible service.
Alongside the improved storage of documents and digital assets, the bank’s newfound ability to create customizable metadata fields significantly improved the team’s content search and retrieval capabilities. This not only saves time, but it supports the company’s image as a tech-first brand.
The company provided an effective solution to challenges and delivered quality support both during the system implementation phase and throughout our partnership. We highly appreciate their loyalty and willingness to accommodate, especially in times of war. We hope to continue our collaboration, maintaining such crucial flexibility in our interaction.
— Illia Morozov, Tech Owner, First Ukrainian International Bank
The difference
Reduced risk of document loss
With Ukraine at war, a paperless approach to banking is a significant advantage. The digitization of physical documents has significantly reduced the risk of document loss during this challenging period, while also maintaining FUIB’s excellent customer experience.
Time and cost savings
Physical document storage and retrieval is not only archaic, but it is also costly. The digitization process implemented by Hyland means that the bank has not only reduced its expenses significantly, but the time spent on spent on manual processing and organizing documents has also been drastically reduced.
Future-proofing Ukraine’s leading bank
As a rapidly developing bank, the removal of physical documents is a first step in the digital transformation journey that the company is set on. Moving to a paperless process and switching to electronic content highlights the company’s focus on innovation.