Financial services company achieves near-perfect SLAs with Deluxe Lockbox

Background

A large, Midwest-based financial services company has had a relationship with Deluxe for more than 10 years. In 2020, the company extended its relationship with Deluxe to include outsourcing its lockbox payment processing operations.

Business challenge

There were two main reasons why the company sought a new payment solution. First, check payment volume continues to decrease. The company averages a volume of 1.8 million lockbox check payments per month. With a consistent decrease in check payment volume, the company wanted to take the dollars it invested in this area and reallocate them to other technology advances to remain competitive. Prior to outsourcing operations to Deluxe, the company experienced a variety of challenges that are common when running an operations center, e.g., equipment, staffing, capital planning and staying on top of compliance and security requirements from outside parties. “Customers were impacted when we faced challenges meeting required deadlines,” said a senior operations director with the company.

Solution

When implementing a new solution, the company felt it was important to find a partner who not only understood their needs but supported them to the best of their ability. “Selecting the right partner that had similar values and supported the overall customer experience was important to us, including the timeliness and quality of processing payments,” he said. “Deluxe met our expectations for customer experience. They are very competitive in cost and ease of use.”

Results

Overall, the company’s lockbox payment processes have improved since outsourcing to Deluxe. Its Service-Level Agreements (SLAs) and regulatory requirements continue to be met. “The overall implementation and ramp up of new tools was relatively minor,” he explained. “Deluxe was very engaged to ensure teams were trained properly and had continued support.” The financial services company has experienced near-perfect SLAs and quality for 20 consecutive months. Deluxe has been a valuable lockbox services partner for the company due to its expertise, technology and capacity to effectively support changes and volume swings when managing lockbox processing. “Deluxe is the market leader in this space,” said a senior operations director. “They continue to make investments in technology and their process to provide efficiencies and greater value.”