Florida Banking June 2024

BANCSERV ENDORSED PARTNER: NCONTRACTS

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WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE AS A SERVICE (KAAS)?

BY MICHAEL BERMAN, FOUNDER AND CEO OF NCONTRACTS

A s the financial services industry evolves, so do the solutions available to banks. One of the most valuable solutions, especially as bank budgets are stressed to do more with less, is Knowledge as a Service (KaaS). KaaS is combining technology and talent to deliver knowledge, information and expertise through a cloud based platform or software solution. It can include anything from databases, research, and model content to professional expertise and analysis. The goal of KaaS is to provide banks efficient, cost effective access to top-tier expertise so that the board, management and employees can leverage knowledge they need to work efficiently and make informed decisions without investing in more people and infrastructure. Software as a Service (SaaS) is a model where a solution provider hosts its applications on the cloud, enabling customers to use the platform anywhere they have an internet connection without downloading software. SaaS solutions can be anything from email and calendar applications to customer relationship management, project management, and fintech tools to streaming services. The difference between KaaS and SaaS comes down to what’s inside the solution and around the solution. While a SaaS solution often makes your bank more efficient, whether through streamlining processes or aiding an activity your institution can’t do on its own, a KaaS solution improves on that efficiency by adding knowledge to the mix so that your institution is smarter — savings hours and hours of research and analysis for faster, more insightful decision making. It’s constantly adding new information and is supported by experts. Examples of Knowledge as a Service Solutions KaaS solutions cover many industries, but one area where they really lighten the workload while Software as a Service vs. Knowledge as a Service

improving business intelligence is banking. Fintechs, including risk management technology (risktech) and compliance management (regtech) companies, have begun offering solutions that do more than automate risk and compliance functions. Staffed by risk and compliance management experts, they break down complex concepts and translate regulatory jargon into easily digestible information so that financial institutions and the companies that partner with them can better understand their risk exposure and more informed decisions, more quickly. Areas of risk management and compliance that get the most benefit from KaaS include: Regulatory change. Basic regtech can help a financial institution log what it’s doing to implement new regulations, but it doesn’t tell you what changes were made, if the changes impact your bank, and offer a suggested implementation plan. That still takes hours upon hours of careful research and reading. At Ncontracts, KaaS means that our in-house regulatory attorneys and certified compliance officers update Ncomply, our compliance management solution, daily — doing all that reading and research so your bank can focus on what needs to be done. They also take page after page of dense regulatory language and condense it into plain English summaries so it’s easy to understand what’s expected. Implementation guides give your institution a head start in deciding what to do next and a path forward. Risk assessments. Risk management technology solutions do a great job promoting consistency by ensuring the entire institution is using the same scale to measure risk. They make it possible to assign risk assessments to staff and view risk in real time. But before you can conduct a risk assessment, you must identify the potential risks. You need to know what questions to ask and which areas to evaluate. A KaaS solution like Nrisk lightens that load with model risk assessments drafted by experts to point you in the

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