Case Studies

Lean Six Sigma Speeds Account
Opening Process & Cut Costs

One of our clients from the banking sector was suffering from major losses, reduced clientele, and dipping the company's reputation. To remain competitive it needed to improve its account opening process, balanced cost management, and increased efficiency. Cynosure incorporated lean six sigma principles to enhance the company's reputation and efficiency.

The Situation

Losing market value to competitors and suffering from slow growth in major processes. In order to remain competitive, the client had to:

  • Reduce Cycle Time of Account Opening
  • Look for innovative methods needed for agile competitiveness

The client asked us to address the following issues:

  • Where were they lagging in operations and how can it be addressed?
  • How can they reduce the cycle time of the Account opening process
  • How can they defy proper management of cost allotments?

Our Approach

Cynosure implemented DMAIC approach and lean principles to improve the bank's operations. We found that the major issues with the organization were:

  • Highly paper-based process
  • Non-value added activities that were creating waste: transportation, defective forms and rework.
  • Variations in efficiency and processing speed
  • The error rate in the documentation was in double digits
  • Lack of process documentation-Policies and Procedures including process flows

Our Recommendations

Cynosure identifies six major and most critical recommendations mentioned below with the bank's process and prioritized them to improve the organization's effectiveness.

Revamp the entire account opening process

Imaging & workflow were introduced in the process

Integrated workflow with the enterprise platform

Revamp application form with all customer's contact details along with home country details.

Reduced the number of pages in the customer a/c opening form from 16 to 4.

Auto checks and validations were built-in for the data entry at the form-filling stage

Introduced other services as a default in a single account opening form

Reduction in number of FTE in the central processing unit

The Results

With the support from Cynosure, and the implementation of suggested recommendations, the client was able to :

  • Redeploy 5 FTE from the central processing unit to different units where there was a shortage of staff
  • TAT reduced by 75%
  • Optimized resources in the Branch effectively
  • The customer satisfaction survey showed a positive score of 85% CSAT with a sample size of 1000 customers
  • Error rate reduced from 22.5% to less than 3%.
  • Estimated cost savings of USD 169K.