From Chaos to Clarity: How Synctera Centralizes BaaS Program Data

We’ve all had that moment. Your desk is a mess and you're trying to find a specific note that has the details you need for a key project. You know it's there, buried somewhere in the clutter of papers and post-its, but finding it is a challenge all on its own.

That same feeling of frustration and wasted time is what many bankers experience when trying to track down key data points. With data often scattered across legacy systems, different tech platforms, and functional teams, what should be a simple task often becomes a hunt. Whether responding to regulators or managing day-to-day operations, for banks finding the right information quickly is critical. 

Without a centralized data strategy, accessing the right information at the right moment becomes a major challenge. A recent study by Cornerstone Advisors highlights how pervasive this problem is for banks with only 11% of bankers surveyed saying they have a “very effective” data strategy. 

As banks launch or scale Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) programs, the operational complexity increases quickly. Partnering with FinTechs introduces new KYC flows, payment rails, program-specific policies, and a wealth of documentation. Without a cohesive strategy, managing all this data across disparate systems makes it harder to operate effectively and compliantly. Over time, this problem only gets worse. 

Through ongoing conversations with our bank partners, it’s clear that one of Synctera’s core strengths is our ability to centralize the full spectrum of BaaS data. Much like a traditional core banking system, Synctera ingests and unifies data to power reporting and a bank’s day-to-day workflows.

From transaction data and customer demographics, to due diligence documents and case history, the Synctera Platform helps banks stay organized, meet regulatory demands, and maintain oversight as their FinTech programs grow.

Over the past year, we've continued to invest in this centralization, launching new tools in collaboration with our compliance team and bank partners.

The result: new capabilities that make data even more accessible, programs easier to oversee, and growth more manageable. Key additions include:

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Centralized Documentation for Better Oversight

Policy and procedure documentation is central to gaining alignment across the organization on internal policies and workflows. Banks define their own internal policies and procedures specific to their BaaS program. On top of that, each FinTech partner they onboard brings unique documentation specific to their specific product set, customer demographic, and operational structure. 

The result? A mountain of documents scattered across systems.

To address this, we launched the Bank Resource Center within the Synctera Console.

Now, in the same place where banks access customer data, transaction details, and perform operational workflows, they can easily retrieve the policy documents they need. This enables bank employees to more easily manage regulatory reviews, send pre-approved templates to FinTech partners, and share internally without hunting through multiple shared drives.

With BaaS programs involving a variety of cross-functional teams, a single source of truth for all policies and procedures helps to drive alignment and operational efficiency. 

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Easier Access to the Data that Matters

Synctera Insights is Synctera’s dashboard tool that helps banks and FinTech teams visualize trends, spot issues, and explore details with ease. By working with our bank partners to learn what information teams need during regulatory reviews and in their day-to-day work, we’ve continuously made enhancements to Synctera Insights that build on our data centralization foundation.

Based on these learnings we’ve re-designed the Synctera Insights homepage to provide users across functional areas, such as payment operations and compliance, easy access to the data that’s relevant to their role. 

Additionally, we've launched an upgraded version of the Program Executive Overview dashboard, which brings together macro-level insights on growth, revenue, and compliance health to support bank leaders oversight and strategic decisions making.

Turning Scattered Notes into an Organized Desk

While having more data on who your customers are and how your business operates may inherently seem like a good thing, the benefits are only realized when you have a way to use that data to make meaningful decisions. When information is scattered across systems and spreadsheets, it becomes harder to act efficiently and the risk of error increases.

For banks, effective oversight and compliance management comes down to having the right data, accessible at the right time, to manage those key areas. 

Just as business tools, like Asana for project management or Salesforce for revenue management, were created to centralize and organize massive amounts of data, the Synctera Platform similarly operates as a bank’s “BaaS Management Platform”. 

As the volume and complexity of data from Synctera’s customers and bank partners grows, our teams remain committed to empowering our customers and partners by keeping their “desks” clean, organized, and ready for scale.