The Banking Buzz: Future-Ready Banking: Unify 101, Streamlining Deposit Automation Across Every Channel

Thank you all for joining us today. My name is Kara Talcott. I am the marketing communications coordinator here at Allogene. Today, we'll be going over all things Unify, Alligent's award winning enterprise deposit automation platform, and what's ahead for us here at Alligent. We have a great set of speakers here with us today. We have Alfred Givens, our director of product management, and Doug Hendrix, a senior product manager for payments. If any questions come up during the webinar, please feel free to type them into the chat box. We'll have a designated Q and A segment at the end to answer anything that comes up. And with that, I'm gonna hand things over to Alfred to kick everything off. Thank you, Cara, and thanks for everyone for joining today. One of the things that, we go through the UNIFY process and the solution that we have here at Algent, I want to start off with just giving you an overview of some of the things that we have been awarded for in the industry. Innovation and product product excellence has been through the twenty twenty five PayTech Awards, which show that we're the you know, as part of the best consumer payments system for banks and FIs, this was awarded to unifies innovation in consolidating public channels, real time processing, fraud mitigation, and scale of and and us having a scalable infrastructure or, you know, architecture. The Credit Union Times luminaries award twenty twenty five. We're the finalists there in AI advances and mobile banking and were recognized for one of our other products, which is called FastDocs and AI workflow automation and and unifies mobile banking innovations around that. There's also the TAG FinTech Advance Awards where we were finalists, and this highlights Allogene's impactful FinTech contributions in Georgia. There's also the TAG Top forty Innovation Tech Companies in Georgia for twenty twenty five, and we were acknowledged for our overall technological innovation and impact on the local fintech ecosystem. From a workplace and company culture recognition point of view, we were recognized as major one of major Atlanta's top workplaces to work. And this is this is based on employee feedback, honoring our strong culture of inclusivity, as well as collaboration and employee engagement. From a broader market and industry impact point of view, it shows that, you know, from a product innovation with our AccuAccount as well as recognition from modernizing lending workflows. From a payment solution point of view, especially with Unifi, it shows that our it's a continued acknowledgment of our leadership in payment processing and and modernization. And these these awards matter because it shows that we are innovation focused. We're forward thinking, so we're very proactive in the industry as we invest heavily in technology and AI. It also shows that we have a practical impact on financial institutions. These awards show real improvements in efficiency, fraud prevention, and automation. We also have a strong internal culture. So the workplace award validates our long term stability as well as our huge impact on being able to have employee centric values. And then the last one is, from a market leadership point of view, the recognition from the Regional Tech Association reinforces our status as a key fintech innovator. This next slide is, you know, kinda get into the meat of the matter as it relates to Unifi. It was designed to streamline all deposits and other input channels with a single platform that applies business rules seamlessly across the board. This simplification is highlighted in how easy it is to manage and have complete oversight of the activities within the solution and how we have introduced somewhat of a paradigm shift in a chip processing world, right, where we're moving away from batch processing to introducing a product to the market that looks at and works in its smallest unit, which is items and transactions. So as we look at this slide, one of the things that we try to do and we have achieved that in the market we have heard many times through publications and otherwise how checks are declining. While the overall volume has, in effect, been declining, the average dollar amount of checks written and this is as of through Q2 twenty twenty five is in the region of about three three thousand dollars. Right? So with this in mind, we are proud to say that our goal of wanting to be the processing system on which the last check written in the US, Canada, and the UK is processed on is really a goal that is attainable. Our leadership, development, and product teams continue to work hard in ensuring that every single check that is processed is evaluated on every level to verify that it will successfully flow through the payment system. This slide kind of provides a few highlights about Unifi. We spoke you heard me talk about the single platform. It supports both day one and day two processes seamlessly. Your deposit channels such as teller, back counter, ATM, ITM, commercial, and mobile are all covered and are part of what we support to ensure that fraud mitigation features and functionalities are front and center to reducing the probability of risk and write offs. It's also cloud ready and thin client, which lends itself to being accessible from anywhere. So this slide is the depiction of the overall processes and dependencies that illustrates a typical deployment and the activities undertaken to process items and transactions in Unify. It starts with partners such as the different cores and ATM providers as well as digital providers who would integrate with our API suite to support image capture for mobile and commercial deposit as well as image retrieval for statements and online banking requests. From an output point of view, it is creating the files required for the clearing through the Fed or some other clearing partner that that AFI may have. Because in some cases, you may have instances where you're sending files to, like, a processor as input or as an interface to a core for account updates, like a posting file to update the account based on deposits made as well as checks that are presented for payment. The partners work with us to provide the inputs in the form of items and transactions. These items are then validated against the configured business rules and actions taken to assure their collectible collectibility. Some of these rules are code line validation and repair, duplicate detection, which can span from day one to six months, image quality and usability, and using our home homegrown customer scoring modules that looks at customer or member activity anomalies and flag those for user review and action. The last step in the process will be the outputs, which can be scheduled automatically, thus adding to the efficiencies of the system where actions can be taken without user intervention unless there's an issue. Last thing indicated here is the archive system, which takes care of your multi day reporting and analytics and also serves as the repository for the duplicate detection process. So obviously, part of, you know, the check processing world that has to be addressed as a, you know, leader of industry conversations is check fraud. So UniFi has a unique ability in, you know, the way that it's stacked for access to address check fraud. You know, it's no secret between the channels, mobile, ATM, ITM, even teller lines are still seeing high volumes of check fraud. The types of fraud that is going on in the world is pretty much the same as always been, but you can see with some of the numbers, you know, online banking, business email compromise, phishing, check, bill pay, onboarding, you know, it it the numbers are significant. So, you know, when it came to addressing the check fraud landscape in Unify, we realized it needed to be a multilayered approach to providing solutions for fraud prevention. Obviously, our goal is to prevent the fraud from happening versus coming back to do mitigation afterwards. So we have it across all of the channels. We can leverage real time image analysis. We also leverage microline analysis. There's also the scoring model. So depending upon what the channel is and which type of fraud prevention you're looking to tackle, you can reach out into the world to determine based off the bank account number or routing number, is there any known negative history related to that bank account, whether it be NSFs or maybe the account reported closed. The image analysis of the check actually takes the additional step farther in to look at the check image itself, compare it to other check images from that bank account, determine, you know, does the payee look right? Is it the right color? Is the signature line? Is the memo line compromised? Does the numerical amount match the written amount? You know? So all of those things will happen within the check image analysis to determine if something is potentially fraudulent, allowing it to be flagged as an exception item, and then presenting it to, you know, a banking operation specialist for review. Right? Because the goal is to be able to flag the items, have the items reviewed, and determine, you know, what the decision is moving forward, if there needs to be a hold placed or not. You know, you can also leverage auto decisioning in those elements to determine when you want to move an item to be an exception to be reviewed. You could do it based off of dollar amounts, thresholds, you know, check sequencing, things like that. And then, you know, at the end of the day, the scoring model provides a, you know, detailed look at the history of transactions. Right? The easiest way to determine, you know, check fraud type scenarios is when things are different than what normally happens within the checking account. You know? Does this check clear on the fifteenth of every month? Does it clear twice a month, once a month? So the scoring model takes into the historical transaction account information to give you a little bit of that detail level understanding as to what typically flows within the the movement of the the checks for that that bank account particularly. So we'll kind of switch gears into more like a the what we have on the horizon for for for Unify. And one of the big things is here is that with the with this executive dashboard design, it is built on the fact that we capture sixty plus pieces of metadata with an item that's associated with an item. The intent of this is to transform this data into information that all levels of the organization can use and make sound decisions. A few of the key data that will be part of this includes, for example, things like channel volume, determine which capture or input channel has the highest volume in terms of dollar amount and item count, of the channels processed, how many items are being corrected as a result, and to be able to drill down into which channel has the highest number of items that need to be corrected. That gives an oversight as to from an operations point of view, where do we need to, you know, kinda move more individuals, or we need to have more training and and everything else? And in terms of fraud mitigation, which channel has the most items flagged for fraud? And we can extend that to the decision taken so you can have an idea of how many were decision as confirmed fraud or not. So it gives you kind of like an ROI as to how well the fraud process is and how effective it is in your organization. And then based on the filters available, you'll be able to understand which processing day has your highest volume. Right? We talk about the day after Thanksgiving, the with all the shopping and everything else. How does that impact your organization? How does that impact your operations to where you can staff your organization or your your operations more efficiently to be able to take care of your, you know, those days where you have more users than not. And so in keeping with the what's ahead for unified landscape, one of our big focuses, obviously, you know, seeing the analytics and the Trent executive dashboard is important. Another one that we realized is in the business intelligence world, the the data that we have specific to routing numbers and bank accounts, whether they're on us items or transit items, there's a significant amount of trend analysis that can be done. You can do comparative analysis on daily, weekly, and monthly trends. You know, you can determine how frequently certain types of checks come through. Obviously, that plays a healthy space within the fraud and exception and return item level information for bank accounts. How many times are items returned for a specific account, whether it be on us or transit, will increase the opportunity for, you know, your operational efficiencies around holes and around risk and mitigation. So the business intelligence effort is pretty significant, and, you know, we're really looking at it at the transaction level to then pull all of the information related to the specific bank accounts and honest items and transit items to provide a complete picture of, you know, as much as we know about the accounts, you know, again, whether it's negative, positive, or either way, but really to, you know, provide that line of insight across all the channels and, you know, all the operators, whether it be a teller or an operations analyst, giving them the lens and the visibility to to see and understand, you know, again, operationally where holds might need to be placed, why exceptions could be continuing to occur. And then in addition to, you know, not just acknowledging UniFi and the the check item processing side that is really improved, we also realized, Alagit, that, you know, there are other payment rails out there. And as far as, you know, the evolution of Alligent, we see the RTP and FEDNOW systems for faster payments as being a natural layer of inclusion for the next steps to unify. We all know that the, you know, real time payments landscape is instant settlement, which is a payment transaction that really hasn't existed until these platforms have come along. And so our kind of vision with the introduction is to allow you to see side by side your check processing payments and how they're moving with their exceptions within Unifi. And you can also be able to see the same type of lens with your FedNow transactions or your RTP transactions. And you're gonna be able to do it in, you know, a singular space. You're not having to jump through multiple platforms and, you know, move different elements through different user experiences. It it'll be right there next to your check items, and you'll see the same lens. Right? You'll also have the ability for, you know, your funds management more effectively as you watch the debits and credits come in through the instant settlement process. And you get to do, again, all of it through Unifi. You know, we don't think you know, at the end of the day, while the check volumes are declining, you know, we don't see the real time payment landscape as necessarily replacement as much as it's just another payment rail that's important for banks to be able to leverage and use and have in their, you know, in their capabilities and ability to provide to their consumers and business clients as well. Thank you so much, Doug. Now that we've, you know, sort of reached the end, we're going to start taking some Q and A questions. I see a few in the chat. Since you mentioned earlier that check volumes were declining, why did Allogene choose to pursue UNIFI? Yeah. I think one of the things that as as as a as a team or as a company, when we looked at the fact that even though checks were declining, checks were still in the industry. Right? People are still writing checks. As a matter of fact, it became obvious that the dollar amount of the checks, the average dollar amount was increasing. So we still have customers that we had to, you know, provide a solution to them that ensures that all these checks that are captured are go through the payment system. We apply rules or business rules against these to make sure that, you know, the risk profile is is checked against everything, the check that's that's that's processed. So we still have that responsibility. Right? And we have the backing of our of our leadership team where we still have the responsibility to every single financial institution to make sure that every check that's processed goes through that same rigorous business rule according to what the AFI is looking for in terms of their risk averse or their risk profiles to make sure that every single check is is collectible. Thank you for that. Looks like the next one I see is, what does a real time check transaction look like? So that's one of the unique concepts and, you know, designs that unify the platform itself really brought to the table. Having that integration directly with core providers when checks are coming through specific transaction channels gives us the ability to take, for instance, those on us items and instead of waiting for the batch to be collected, to be processed at the end of the day coming through the connection points through UniFi, we can reach out and we can post those on us items within the core versus having to wait for the batch process. So, you know, while it may not be instantaneous, like, you know, less than a second or something like that, You know, you you've altered the world from waiting for the batch files to get dropped and things to move to creating a connection point that allows for, you know, items to be able to move once they've been processed through the channel. Thank you. And it looks like I'm just seeing one last question in the chat. Does Aligent plan to leverage AI within UniFi? The answer to that is yes. I mean, as I mentioned, we store sixty plus pieces of metadata with each item. Right? And to be able to use that to provide complete or or information to different levels of the organization, right, and help them to make decisions is of utmost interest to us, and that's something that, again, goes along the lines of being able to support our client base. Right? So, yes, that is something that is definitely there. We started some of it with the as Doug mentioned about the customer scoring model. There's also things like reporting and and other analytics and and and stuff that we want to provide to our customers. So, yes, AI is definitely at the forefront of our thinking and of what we want to continue to add to our product offering to make it easier for DFI every user in DFI to be able to get information where they don't have to recalculate anything. They get information that's readily readily available for them to use. Well, looks like that is the last question. So thank you, everybody, for joining us today. If any additional questions come up, please reach out to us through the website or email us directly at marketingalligent dot com. Be sure to check out our events page for all future events and webinars. We appreciate your time with us this afternoon and hope you have a great day.