About

Kleinwort Hambros Bank Limited is part of the Private Banking division of the wider Société Générale Group. It has offices in the UK (Cambridge, Edinburgh, London, Leeds, Newbury), Jersey, Guernsey and Gibraltar offering a wealth of experience and product solutions in helping individuals, families, entrepreneurs and family offices manage their assets. 

The problem

When reviewing the management and maintenance of the bank’s authorised signatory lists there were several problem areas identified.

• Version control issues across several lists

• No easy single view across multiple functions, signatories and locations

• No clear audit of changes made and when they were made

• Significant time spent revising lists and arranging approvals

• No simple method of updating changes and communicating these to staff and counterparts

The solution

Kleinwort Hambros Bank’s Head of Corporate Governance and Accountability, Amanda Collins, sought an effective solution to streamline the company’s approach to maintaining and distributing Authorised Signatory Lists (ASLs). The purpose was to enable Directors and other signatories to see what they could sign for, as well as provide staff with easy visibility to those who had the correct permissions to sign specific documents relevant to their function or department.

They created a repository of lists that contained permissions for both internal and external signing capabilities.

Each member of staff could refer to this without the intervention of the Company Secretariat or Heads of Department, achieving greater efficiency in this business task.

All of this needed to be done in a timely manner whilst maintaining the highest level of security and GDPR compliance.  

Cygnetise was the outstanding solution offering all the requirements to fix the process underlying problems identified.

The system is online-based and does not require lengthy or complex integration and the intuitive nature of the platform means that there is no need for extensive time loss to training and support of the system internally.  End users quickly become confident using the application and recognise the benefits to their responsibilities and the organisation.

The outcome

Having implemented Cygnetise as a solution in 2020, Kleinwort Hambros Bank was able to:

• Reduce by 95% the time taken to add and remove people from multiple lists

• Keep an automated date and timestamp for each list that provides clear validation

• Easily share lists internally and externally, which enables business transactions and needs to be met more efficiently

• Maintain a clear database of signatories, delegated authorities from the board and the individual permissions that are easily searchable

• Create a secure and low-maintenance system that provides an efficient end-user experience, with easy navigation requiring very little training