Fewer Questions, Better Answers

How United Bank Pairs Ncomply and Nquiry for Compliance Confidence

“Nquiry has been very helpful in our research and allowing us to really become more efficient.”

Thomas Williams, Chief Compliance Officer, United Bank

Founded in 1905, United Bank has spent more than a century serving Zebulon, Georgia. As the bank continues to grow, Thomas Williams, Chief Compliance Officer and 15-year veteran of the bank, knows the compliance program needs to grow alongside it.

The Challenge

Compliance research at United Bank was a manual process before Nquiry. A question involving Regulation Z, for example, meant going straight to the regulatory source, "trying to find what we were looking for, and then interpreting that particular piece of the regulation to tie it back to what the question was asking." Newer staff often didn't know where to start, and getting an answer back to someone could mean being tied down in three to five hours of research, Thomas notes.

While he had explored other AI-focused compliance solutions, Thomas hadn't found what he needed in the available options until he looked into Nquiry. Other tools were built by people who "knew regulation, but they didn't know banking," he says. “There's a confidence in who is actually working on Nquiry, who's building it, and knowing that there was a lot of thought and expertise put into building the system."

The Solution

Since implementing Nquiry, Thomas's team has quickly folded it into their regular weekly Ncomply workflow to keep pace with new regulatory and compliance risk areas.

Glass box AI, not a black box. “Having a closed loop environment that focuses strictly on the regulation [and] the ability to pull in state regulations” has given Thomas confidence in the answers his team is seeing in Nquiry. “It’s glass box AI, so you can see everything that is happening."

Built-in documentation. "When we put in our search, Nquiry captures that information, timelines it for us, gives us the reply, and then if there are follow-up questions, it keeps that information as well."

Compliance expertise on call. For situations that need more than a citation, United Bank has access to Compliance Concierge, a live-expert escalation path. So far, the answers Nquiry provides have been accurate and well-documented enough that Thomas's team hasn't needed it. "There's the comfort of knowing that if we stumble across something or we're stuck, then we've got that opportunity that we can escalate it and get that additional feedback there."

The Results

Documentation that holds up at exam time. "I'm not having to go back over to a spreadsheet now and document that output, the date, what I told it, what it gave me back. [Nquiry] is creating that report for me… From an examination standpoint, I can hand that to a regulator and say, here's our validation for the reason why we did what we did, and have it all laid out very efficiently."

A team that answers its own questions. The fewer questions Thomas fields, the more it signals his team is developing real self-sufficiency. "If somebody's always giving you the answer, you're not necessarily learning. Where we learn is where we do a deeper dive, we do that research, we do that reading."

Faster ramp-up for new hires. New compliance staff don't have to spend hours hunting for the right regulations and interpreting them by trial and error. "It's giving you that citation, it's giving you that response... you're not just turning somebody to the wolves, you're giving them really an outline to start with."

A go-to resource for the whole compliance team. "The misconception is the people that have been in it for 25 years know everything.” Thomas notes. Nquiry, he says, gives even experienced staff "an opportunity to learn... to broaden your horizons, open your compliance vocabulary, expand it, and learn."

Advice for Compliance Officers

Thomas encourages other compliance officers to embrace purpose-built AI solutions for financial services such as Nquiry rather than wait on the sidelines. "The use of AI and being able to streamline the compliance process creates so much efficiency that you don't realize that you're spinning your wheels on things until you have a solution like Nquiry that can speed up the process for you."

As with all AI tools, human oversight is key. “We've still got to validate that output. The human's not going away. What it does is frees that human up to be able to do more."

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Fewer Questions, Better Answers

How United Bank Pairs Ncomply and Nquiry for Compliance Confidence

The Challenge

The Solution

The Results

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Advice for Compliance Officers

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