CentrixPIQS™
ACH File Monitoring and Risk Reporting
The Centrix Payments I.Q. System™ (PIQS) provides financial institutions with innovative technology to monitor and manage ACH activity. The system offers simple and intuitive analytical reporting of both originated and inbound ACH activity, while also safeguarding against ACH fraud with calendaring and real time validation of originated files.
PIQS allows the financial institution (FI) to customize functionality at the originator level to accommodate unique and demanding processing environments. The management console gives operations personnel a continuous window into ACH activity, while alerts can be configured to notify the FI and/or the client of processing results, calendaring events (i.e. files due today) or questionable ACH activity.
Payments Audits & Risk Assessments: Reality, Requirements, Simplification
The payments landscape has evolved a lot in the last decade, creating complexity and exposing financial institutions (FIs) to risk. In this webinar, risk management experts outlined these challenges and others, described their experiences, and offered best practices and actionable steps to help FIs better manage risk.
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ACH risk is a reality that affects financial institutions of every size and regulators are mandating that financial institutions step up efforts to mitigate this risk. No longer is manual monitoring or a daily spreadsheet of ACH totals sufficient and many FI’s are challenged to comply. Moreover, periodic risk assessments are mandatory and traditionally very labor intensive. The Centrix Payments I.Q. System (PIQS) provides a cost effective and flexible solution that greatly simplifies compliance, protects your institution and your clients, and automates customer risk assessments by consolidating payment related data from multiple transaction channels into a single view.
System functionality can be categorized into three main functions: ACH risk reporting, ACH file validation and the customer risk review worksheet. While each provides a unique benefit, it is the collaboration of these functions working in concert that allows PIQS to provide unparalleled control over daily ACH activity to detect questionable transactions, the reporting that all FI’s need to simplify compliance, and the automation to greatly simplify customer risk assessments.
File Validation
Validating originated transactions
Detecting ACH origination activity that is “out of the norm” is the fundamental principal behind the ACH file validation workflow within PIQS. The system monitors and validates all ACH origination activity, regardless of whether a file is submitted via the on-line banking system or through an alternate channel such as FTP. Although many on-line banking systems incorporate rudimentary origination rules, PIQS incorporates a robust validation rules engine that is highly customizable. Moreover, PIQS provides a secondary layer of protection, something that security experts agree upon as an effective strategy to mitigate risk.
Below is a sampling of the validation checks that are available through PIQS:
- ACH calendar validation
- File integrity checks
- SEC code validation
- White list validation (valid RT numbers and account numbers)
- Duplicate file checks
- Dollar limit checks (company/business unit/file)
Risk Reporting
Meeting your compliance needs
PIQS provides financial institutions with a user friendly ACH reporting platform that encompasses both inbound and outbound ACH activity and enables the FI to easily adhere to the ACH reporting requirements defined by regulators and NACHA. Reports can be automatically exported to Excel and flexible filters allow analysis to be done for the entire institution, a specific customer (or group of customers), or a specific transaction type. Exception reporting identifies transaction activity that warrants further review such as excess unauthorized returns, unauthorized originated activity and exposure concerns (including multi-day exposure and temporal risk reporting).
Below is a sampling of the reporting that is available through PIQS:
- Activity analysis by day or month
- High risk originator monitoring
- Transaction analysis by SEC code
- Volume reporting
- Exposure reporting
- Exception reporting
- Trending charts and graphs
- Scheduled files due (calendaring)
- Returns analysis
Enhanced Reporting
Originator Reviews
The PIQS risk review worksheet adds great value to the risk assessment process, which is typically very labor intensive for financial institutions. With PIQS, the consolidation of data from disparate transaction channels is automated, the user interface offers a concise view of the total relationship, the next review date is tracked, and details of the last review are available for reference. In short, the process is more efficient, more thorough, and PAPERLESS! Click here to see the risk review worksheet.
The worksheet also incorporates workflow for approving changes to a customer’s exposure limit. Using PIQS, a relationship manager or underwriter can review the data and enter a new risk (exposure) limit. The adjustment is forwarded to an administrator for approval. If approved, the change is automatically applied to the client parameters, making the process paperless and audited.
Because each financial institution may differ in the way they approach risk assessments, the architecture of the risk review worksheet is extensible, which allows each FI to choose the data sources and individual data elements that are needed for the review process. This design adds great flexibility to meet the risk assessment requirements of virtually every size institution, while also keeping the system affordable.
Scheduled Reports
PIQS greatly reduces the effort required to generate frequently used reports. With PIQS, report selection criteria can be saved as a template, allowing the report to be generated either on demand, or on a schedule, without having to reset the report criteria each time. This feature reduces human error in reporting and also provides significant efficiency.
Reporting for functions such as the ACH Audit or Board Reporting can be scheduled and automatically created, with selected users notified when the reports are available. Using the Scheduled Reporting feature, the output reports are saved as Excel files in a pre-defined network location.
Contact Centrix to see how our products can work for you
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