Category: Financial Services

Breaking the Compliance Gridlock: How Financial Institutions Can Finally Get Ahead: Part 2

Posted on by Sarah Bensimon

In Part 1 of this series, we explored how modern financial technology helps you master multiple accounting frameworks, build bulletproof internal controls, and prevent fraud through smart segregation of duties. These foundational elements create a solid compliance infrastructure, but true financial regulatory excellence requires more.

 

Financial institutions today face equally pressing challenges around revenue recognition, subscription management, and payment security—all areas where manual processes simply can’t keep pace with regulatory demands. In this second installment, we’ll examine how the right technology solution addresses these advanced compliance needs, helping you not just meet requirements but transform compliance from an operational burden into a strategic advantage.

Revenue Recognition Revolution: Automating the Complex

ASC 606 and IFRS 15 have transformed revenue recognition, and keeping up manually just isn’t feasible anymore. Banks and credit unions face increasingly complex requirements for recognizing revenue from diverse products and services.

Advanced financial management systems like NetSuite simplify this process with built-in tools that automate revenue scheduling and allocation according to current standards. Key capabilities include:

  • Custom Recognition Rules – Create specific rules for each product or service, then link them easily to individual contract line items
  • Complex Contract Management – Automate performance obligations, milestones, and other revenue triggers, even for multi-element arrangements
  • Consistent Revenue Allocation – Apply sophisticated rules to ensure consistent treatment across all contracts

With the right platform, you can close your books faster, forecast more accurately, and have confidence that your revenue reporting meets all financial regulatory compliance requirements.

As your institution develops more sophisticated revenue streams, you’ll also need advanced solutions to manage the growing complexity of your billing models. The same technology that handles your accounting can extend to providing comprehensive subscription billing management.

 

Subscription Success: Managing the New Revenue Reality

As your bank or credit union expands into subscription and fee-based services, billing complexity grows exponentially. Managing tiered pricing models, performance fees, and various billing schedules creates significant challenges.

Modern billing platforms manage this complexity with support for multiple pricing models—from simple flat rates to sophisticated tiered and volume-based scenarios. You can implement and manage complex tiered pricing structures with automated calculations, while comprehensive tools track performance and management fees to ensure accurate billing.

These systems combine one-time, recurring, and usage-based charges, giving you the flexibility to create fee structures that align with your business strategy while maintaining full compliance.

Of course, any financial management solution would be incomplete without addressing the critical issue of payment security and compliance. Today’s leading platforms provide the comprehensive protection your institution requires.

Digital Fort Knox: Securing Payment Compliance

Security is non-negotiable in financial services. Banks and credit unions must maintain strict PCI DSS compliance, implement AML and KYC protocols, and ensure secure transaction processing—all while keeping systems user-friendly.

The best financial management platforms support your regulatory compliance requirements with robust security features:

  • PCI DSS Protection – Role-based access controls, multi-factor authentication, and comprehensive data encryption ensure payment processing compliance
  • AML and KYC Integration – Seamless configuration options to work with specialized compliance tools for enhanced verification and monitoring
  • End-to-End Transaction Security – Secure checkout processes and detailed audit trails protect financial information throughout its lifecycle

With these security features in place, you can process transactions confidently while maintaining compliance with relevant regulations. But effective compliance isn’t just about implementing controls—it’s about maintaining visibility into your compliance posture at all times. This is where comprehensive monitoring capabilities deliver exceptional value.

 

From Regulatory Burden to Business Advantage

Cloud-based financial systems such as NetSuite deliver powerful monitoring and reporting tools through real-time dashboards that give you an instant overview of your compliance status and alert you to potential issues. You can track activities as they happen, enabling you to address compliance concerns before they become problems. When audit time comes, you can provide auditors with everything they need through intuitive reporting tools, transforming what was once a stressful audit season into a routine process.

Financial regulatory compliance requirements will continue to evolve, but with the right technology platform, you don’t have to play catch-up anymore. You can finally get ahead of compliance challenges with a comprehensive solution that addresses everything from accounting standards to transaction security.

By implementing a leading cloud financial management solution like NetSuite, you’ll reduce compliance risks, streamline processes, strengthen controls, and enhance reporting capabilities with real-time visibility. An integrated platform offers the tools banks and credit unions need to tackle the complex compliance challenges we’ve discussed throughout this series.

Your Path to Compliance Excellence

Throughout this two-part series, we’ve explored how modern financial technology can transform your approach to regulatory compliance. From the foundational elements of multi-book accounting and internal controls to the complex challenges of revenue recognition and payment security, the right solution provides the integrated capabilities your institution needs to thrive in today’s regulatory environment.

Caravel, a multiple NetSuite Partner of the Year award recipient, offers implementation services tailored specifically for financial institutions. Our team understands the unique compliance needs of banks and credit unions and provides services from initial strategy through deployment and ongoing optimization.

Ready to transform your approach to financial regulatory compliance? The right technology platform with proper implementation can help you break free from compliance gridlock and turn what was once a burden into a strategic advantage for your institution.

Breaking the Compliance Gridlock: How Financial Institutions Can Finally Get Ahead: Part 1

Posted on by Sarah Bensimon

This is the first installment of our two-part series exploring how modern financial technology solves compliance challenges for financial institutions. Part 1 covers multi-book accounting, internal controls, and fraud prevention, while Part 2 will address revenue recognition, subscription management, payment security, and compliance monitoring.

 

Financial institutions have long struggled with the mounting pressures of regulatory compliance, but there’s good news on the horizon. Today’s advanced technology solutions offer banks and credit unions a path to overcome these traditional pain points. By leveraging cloud-based financial platforms, your institution can transform compliance from a source of constant frustration into a streamlined, efficient process. In this series, we’ll examine how these technologies address specific compliance challenges facing financial institutions today.

Beyond the Books: Mastering Multiple Accounting Standards

In today’s fast-paced global economy, financial leaders face the daunting challenge of navigating multiple accounting frameworks. The complexity of reconciling GAAP, IFRS, and local requirements can drain valuable resources and hinder strategic growth. The ability to streamline and unify your financial processes across jurisdictions is not just a matter of efficiency—it’s a strategic advantage. By eliminating the need for manual reconciliation and ensuring compliance with diverse regulatory standards, your finance team can redirect their focus from tedious accounting tasks to high-impact strategic initiatives.

 

This is where modern financial management solutions like NetSuite come into play. As financial institutions increasingly adopt cloud-based technologies to solve compliance challenges, NetSuite has emerged as a leading platform for addressing multi-book accounting complexities.

 

NetSuite offers key advantages in this area:

  • Unified Management: Seamlessly map different charts of accounts across standards like GAAP and IFRS, ensuring consistent alignment and reporting.
  • Automatic Transaction Flow: Transactions automatically post to the appropriate ledgers based on your predefined rules, significantly reducing the risk of errors and the need for manual intervention.
  • Built-In Local Compliance: Support for local currencies and country-specific mandates ensures that your organization remains compliant with all relevant regulations, no matter where you operate.

Imagine the potential of your finance team when they are freed from the burdens of reconciliation. They can focus on strategic analysis and decision-making that drive your business forward, rather than constantly playing catch-up with compliance requirements.

 

But accounting standards represent only one piece of the compliance puzzle. Equally important is the establishment of robust internal controls required by regulations like Sarbanes-Oxley.

SOX Appeal: Building Bulletproof Internal Controls

Sarbanes-Oxley requirements aren’t going away, and the documentation burden can be overwhelming. For banks and credit unions, establishing and maintaining proper approval workflows, audit trails, and internal controls often becomes a major operational challenge.

 

Advanced financial platforms transform this challenge into a streamlined process through customizable approval workflows that enforce proper review and create an auditable trail of activity and decisions. Always-on audit trails track every change to your system, giving you and your auditors the ability to quickly investigate compliance questions. By automating preventative and detective controls, you’ll strengthen your compliance posture while reducing manual work.

 

One particularly valuable feature in modern compliance technology is the ability to require that journal entries be reviewed and approved by someone other than the creator—a key requirement for SOX compliance that’s difficult to enforce manually.

 

These automated controls not only satisfy regulatory requirements but also provide the foundation for another critical compliance area: fraud prevention through proper segregation of duties.

The Great Divide: Fraud Prevention Through Smart Segregation

Preventing fraud requires establishing proper segregation of duties (SoD), but implementing this without creating operational bottlenecks is challenging. Many financial institutions struggle to define appropriate user permissions and monitor potential conflicts.

 

Today’s financial systems help you implement proper segregation of duties by defining granular permissions based on job functions. Your employees receive access only to what they truly need, making your system both more secure and more user-friendly.

 

Modern technology includes automated controls that prevent unauthorized activities and flag potential conflicts before they become compliance issues. Built-in analysis tools constantly monitor user permissions and activities, helping you spot and resolve SoD conflicts quickly.

 

What about smaller teams where perfect segregation isn’t realistic? The best financial systems offer compensating controls like detailed audit trails and real-time monitoring to mitigate risks while maintaining financial regulatory compliance.

Building a Foundation for Compliance Success

The compliance challenges we’ve explored in this first part—multi-book accounting, SOX compliance, and segregation of duties—represent the foundational elements of a robust financial compliance strategy. By leveraging modern technology solutions like NetSuite, your financial institution can transform these traditionally burdensome processes into streamlined, efficient workflows that enhance both compliance and operational performance.

 

As regulatory requirements continue to evolve, having a solid technological foundation in place will position your institution to adapt quickly and confidently. The time and resources your team previously dedicated to manual compliance tasks can be redirected toward strategic initiatives that drive business growth and enhance customer experience.

 

In Part 2 of this series, we’ll explore how modern financial technology helps you tackle revenue recognition challenges, manage subscription billing, secure payment compliance, and build effective risk monitoring systems. We’ll also discuss how implementing the right technology can transform compliance from a burden into a business advantage.

Safeguarding FinTech Companies Against Cyber Threats and Enhancing Data Security

Posted on by Sarah Bensimon

Recent data breaches at large entities like Bank of America and Microsoft Azure clearly demonstrate the challenges and responses faced by the fintech industry. According to Smartdev, Bank of America customers suffered through a data breach in February 2024, “resulting from a cyberattack on Infosys McCamish Systems, an Infosys subsidiary responsible for data processing. The breach exposed sensitive information including names, social security numbers, and account details.”

It goes without saying that stringent security measures are needed across their networks to combat the vulnerability these institutions are faced with daily. The financial sector has always been a major target for cybercriminals due to the valuable nature of the data they handle. The rise of cyberattacks—from ransomware and data breaches to phishing scams and insider threats—has left many fintech companies sleepless as they scramble to protect sensitive customer information, comply with regulations, and maintain their reputations.

The Global Threat Report published by Crowdstrike revealed that cloud environment intrusions have increased by 75% year over year, highlighting the growing importance of cybersecurity for fintech.

Cyber and Data Security Worries

Valuable Data at Risk
Fintech companies store sensitive financial data, personal details, and transaction histories that can be major money-makers for hackers. Data breaches not only put customer information at risk but can lead to massive financial losses, legal consequences, and tarnished reputations. The need for strong cybersecurity for fintech is crucial to mitigate these risks.

Evolving Cyber Threats
Cybercriminals are becoming more and more sophisticated, using advanced tactics to bypass traditional and some sophisticated security measures. Fintech companies face constant threats from ransomware attacks, phishing schemes, and malware, which put both their operations and their customers at risk.

Compliance Challenges
Fintechs must adhere to strict regulations such as GLBA, FCRA, AML, KYC, and a slew of other industry standards designed to protect customers’ financial data. Non-compliance can result in financial penalties, legal consequences, reputational damage, operational disruption, and a loss of customer trust. Keeping up with these ever-evolving regulations while ensuring top-tier security is no easy feat.

 

Overcoming Data and Cybersecurity Challenges with NetSuite

NetSuite, a leading cloud-based Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution, offers a robust suite of tools that can help fintech companies address these pressing cybersecurity concerns. Here’s how:

Advanced Data Encryption and Security Protocols
NetSuite ensures data protection by implementing high-level encryption and security protocols across its platform. This includes end-to-end encryption for sensitive data and multi-factor authentication (MFA) for secure user access. NetSuite’s secure infrastructure minimizes the risks of unauthorized data access, ensuring compliance with global security standards.

Real-Time Threat Detection and Monitoring
NetSuite’s cloud infrastructure is continuously monitored for potential security vulnerabilities. By leveraging cutting-edge threat detection technologies, it can identify suspicious activity in real-time. This alerts companies to potential cyber threats before they cause any damage. This proactive approach in cybersecurity for fintech helps companies respond faster and prevent breaches.

Seamless Compliance with Industry Regulations
NetSuite is designed to help fintech companies stay compliant with financial regulations. The platform includes built-in tools for generating audit trails, ensuring data privacy, and meeting regulatory requirements such as GDPR and PCI DSS. These tools not only help companies stay compliant but also reduce the risk of penalties associated with non-compliance.

Secure Cloud Infrastructure
NetSuite’s cloud platform ensures that all financial data and business operations are safely stored off-site in highly secure data centers. These data centers are equipped with advanced security measures such as physical access controls, firewalls, and automated backups. This not only protects data from potential attacks but also ensures business continuity in case of an incident, enhancing the overall cybersecurity for fintech companies..

Scalability and Flexibility
As fintech companies grow and expand, their security needs evolve as well. NetSuite’s flexible and scalable architecture allows businesses to quickly adapt and implement new security measures as threats evolve. This ensures that fintech companies can future-proof their security strategies without facing costly and disruptive overhauls.

Collaboration and Role-Based Access Control
NetSuite empowers businesses to establish role-based access controls (RBAC) to ensure that only authorized users can access sensitive information. This granular control enables fintech companies to restrict access to critical data, thereby reducing the risk of insider threats and ensuring that employees only have access to the information they need.

In an era where data security and cyber threats are at the forefront of every fintech company’s mind, having a robust, secure, and compliant platform is no longer optional—it’s essential. NetSuite offers the tools, technology, and expertise to help fintech companies combat these ever-growing cybersecurity challenges.

By leveraging NetSuite’s powerful security infrastructure, real-time monitoring, and compliance features, fintechs can safeguard their operations, mitigate risk, and focus on what matters most: driving innovation and delivering top-notch services to their customers.

Caravel specializes in helping fintech companies remain secure and thrive with NetSuite. To learn more, contact us in the form below.

Case Study | DirectBooks Transforms its Financial Management of Several Entities with NetSuite

Posted on by Sarah Bensimon

The Company

DirectBooks is a fintech company and market leading platform for communication in primary markets, specializing in structured deal data, documentation, and information exchange. The DirectBooks platform offers transformative automation and standardization across global investment grade, high yield, and emerging markets fixed income products.

 

The company’s finance team was preparing itself for major changes and growth in the company’s operations that were going to significantly impact existing processes.

The Challenge

DirectBooks was experiencing many changes, including the introduction of new revenue streams, a larger client base with significantly more customer data to manage, as well as the potential for many new subscriptions to manage and track, which included varying subscription periods and pricing models. All of this on top of a multi-entity, multi-currency financial structure.

 

The company’s invoicing process and revenue recognition had room for improvement; its subscription invoices and revenue recognition were both manual processes before making the switch to NetSuite. Additionally, the company’s existing system was not equipped with the tools to carry out accounting processes for multi-subsidiary consolidation, and the company needed to supplement those functions by using other third-party consolidation and reporting tools for eliminations and FX translation. This was the only way for them to see consolidated financials and reports, which did not allow for the flexibility of real-time reporting.

The Solution

After much research and due diligence, DirectBooks decided to make the shift to NetSuite in order to be prepared to scale with the company’s growth and expand the capabilities of their finance tech-stack.

 

The team chose Caravel as its implementation partner due to its structured approach, robust resources, and hands-on process. Caravel’s experience, knowledge, and segmented approach to implementation made them feel at ease. “I felt like the pacing was perfect, and I never had too much on my plate at a given time,” said Ben Karpas, Finance Associate at DirectBooks.

 

Initial sessions with Caravel began with them learning about the DirectBooks business, current finance tech-stack, and processes so they could tailor NetSuite to their needs. They had clear communication throughout the implementation and beyond, and weekly check-ins were very helpful to keep expectations, deliverables, and the overall product on track and on budget.

 

Caravel assisted with customizations such as custom workflows, CSV imports, custom fields and reporting, and custom client-facing PDF invoice formats. Caravel also helped the DirectBooks team make efficient use of time when it came to data migration by providing standardized templates and giving guidance on what was necessary and what was “nice-to-have”, as well as providing experiences from other customers on how to best carry out not only the migration, but the go-forward use and administration.

 

To read about the significant results DirectBooks experienced, please download the full case study below. 

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Webinar on Demand | Revolutionizing Financial Planning & Analysis with AI and Automation

Posted on by Tom Pearce

In a live, 30-minute webinar, Caravel’s EPM Consulting Manager, Sadman Rahman, will discuss NetSuite’s NSPB for budgeting and forecasting.

 

He will reveal capabilities that propel businesses to make more informed decisions with:

 

  • Predictive planning using machine learning by offering:

 

    • Forecast Variance and Bias Insights
    • Prediction Insights
    • Anomaly Insights
Watch Here

Mastering FP&A with Automation and Machine Learning

Posted on by Sarah Bensimon

Many organizations are fraught with inaccurate data that is siloed from business operations when conducting planning and budgeting cycles, resulting in arduous manual work that is time-consuming and loaded with errors. Not to mention, relaying this vital information to leadership and key stakeholders can be laborious and flawed.


NetSuite Planning and Budgeting, or NSPB, is a powerful tool used by organizations to budget and forecast utilizing financial data from NetSuite. This robust solution propels finance teams to spend less time on manual tasks, saving them time and energy.


It is collaborative, scalable, automated, and accurate. NSPB provides predictive analytics, sophisticated modeling capabilities, “what-if” scenarios, rolling forecasts, reporting and approval workflows, transparency into performance, and real-time decision-making capability.


Predictive Planning with Machine Learning

The power behind NSPB is due to the integration of machine learning to automate processes, enhance accuracy in forecasting and budgeting, and offer deep insights into financial data, which enables users to make more informed decisions.


With predictive forecasting, machine learning algorithms analyze historical data and identify patterns and trends that financial analysts can miss. This aids in generating more accurate forecasts for future periods based on past performance. These same algorithms can automatically detect anomalies in financial data, which is helpful for pinpointing unusual spending patterns, unexpected variances, or mistakes in budgeting.


NSPB can leverage machine learning to optimize budget allocations based on various constraints and objectives. This might involve recommending adjustments to spending levels across different departments or projects to achieve desired financial outcomes.


Machine learning can help in generating and analyzing multiple scenarios based on different assumptions and inputs, which allows finance professionals to evaluate the potential impact of various business decisions or market changes on their budgets and plans.

Real-Time Data and Collaborative Endeavors

Because NSPB integrates financial planning across the entire organization, data is consolidated from various departments and functions which offers a wholistic view of performance and forecasts. Real-time financial data enables teams to make informed decisions based on the latest information, rather than outdated facts and figures.


With “what-if” scenarios, NSPB allows businesses to create several scenarios based on multiple assumptions and variables, which helps in comprehending potential outcomes of different strategies and decisions. This facilitates better risk management and contingency planning.


The collaborative approach that NSPB takes facilitates different teams to work together and ensures alignment with overall business objectives, assuring that everyone is working for a common purpose. Tools for monitoring performance against budgets and forecasts helps to identify deviations early on, and fosters corrective action to be taken sooner, helping to stay on track with financial goals.



Save Time, Cost, and Hours

Integrating NSPB into your NetSuite instance will greatly help financial teams to cut time on the budgeting cycle. It not only reduces human error in detecting anomalies, it also frees time from analyzing data and allows financial professionals to actually do the work and make decisions. Its out-of-the-box functionality allows teams to leverage these tools to get accurate forecasts without significant upfront costs.


Because all financial data, forecasts, and budgets are stored on a centralized platform, it eliminates the need for spreadsheets and disparate systems across departments. This ensures more accuracy and consistency in financial planning.


Manual work such as data entry, consolidation, and reporting are automated, which reduces time spent on these tasks and allows FP&A teams to focus more on analysis and strategy. Its customized reporting capabilities allows users to generate reports and dashboards that are tailored to specific needs, giving way to a more transparent view into performance and better decision-making. Financial plans and budgets also adhere to regulatory requirements by offering audit trails, version control, and security.

NSPB enhances FP&A by providing a unified, collaborative, and automated solution that seamlessly integrates with NetSuite ERP and empowers organizations to make more intelligent decisions based on accurate data, more precise forecasting, and ultimately improves overall performance and strategic outcomes.


For expert guidance on NSPB and NetSuite and how it can drive your organization to be more efficient and effective, contact us below.

NSPB Tips & Tricks

Posted on by Tom Pearce

On Thursday, September, 7th we hosted a live training session about the tips and tricks our team have for NetSuite Planning & Budgeting.

 

Caravel covered the below topics:

– Infolets

– Dashboards

– Cell Level Security

– Clone Migration

– Navigation Flow

– Action Menu

*Agenda subject to change

 

Presenters

Arbi Villena | EPM Director

 

 

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