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- Innovation & Transformation
- Improve Efficiency
- Digital Adoption
- The Future of Banking
Orbit: Streamlining cash management with virtual accounts
During its rapid growth Orbit Property Management needed to reduce the number of physical bank accounts it was opening for clients. The answer came in the form of HSBC UK’s virtual accounts solution.
Orbit Property Management Ltd (Orbit) is a fast-growing property management company incorporated in the United Kingdom. With offices in London and Birmingham, Orbit manages over 300 commercial properties, for which it provides a variety of innovative and comprehensive property solutions.
The challenge
- As a result of its growth, Orbit was dealing with as many as 500 physical bank accounts for daily cash management activities
- The large number of accounts required led to time consuming monthly reconciliations
- Having a fast and efficient account opening process was required for essential activities such as deposit collection.
Orbit decided that a change was needed to improve the experience for its clients and to reduce the time spent on administration.
The solution
After speaking to cash management consultants at HSBC UK, Orbit decided to implement a Virtual Accounts solution. The company is currently using two different kinds of Virtual Accounts.
- Published Virtual Accounts are assigned to customers for them to remit payments to directly
- Allocation Virtual Accounts allow Orbit to independently create Virtual Accounts as needed to hold collected funds in.
Each of these acts as a substitute for a physical account, allowing Orbit to reduce the number of physical accounts required, while enabling a faster account opening process.
Virtual Accounts have made our lives a lot easier, particularly around account opening, which now takes just a few minutes each time as opposed to several days. We also save substantial time on reconciliation as there are a lot fewer physical client accounts to reconcile than previously. Staff members are much happier and our clients are unaffected by the seamless changeover.
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The outcome
Orbit has now built a stronger foundation for its continued growth by achieving operational efficiency and a better customer experience. Through using Virtual Accounts, Orbit has said it has reduced its:
- number of physical accounts by a factor of 90%
- time spent on account opening by about an hour per account, through the elimination of form filling from the account opening process
- account opening process by an average of 3 business days
