I&M Bank is a Kenyan commercial bank, founded in 1974. It is based in Nairobi and serves the banking needs of large and small business customers. As of September 2019, the bank had assets valued in excess of US$ 2.52 billion, with shareholders’ equity of approximately US$ 424 million.
Prior to AARO product introduction and implementation, I&M Bank used Excel to manually perform group consolidation activities. In 2017, I&M Bank decided to switch to a new system to eliminate the human error risk and automate reporting.
Paul Ngunya is the Statutory Reporting and Consolidation Officer at I&M Bank. As an end-to-end user, he prepares financials and generates reports for various global subsidiaries of the company. I&M Bank determined that AARO was best for their organization for myriad reasons, however Paul Ngunya highlights data tracking and storage as one of the most important features of the AARO product.
As a part of the implementation team, Paul Ngunya was involved in collaborating with consultants from the AARO company on the data loading process. He remarked “when we had challenges with a joint venture, the AARO support team was extremely helpful. In addition, the AARO consultants were important to automating cash flow for our company” he continues.
“AARO meets all of our expectations and is able to sustain the needs of our company.”
Paul Ngunya, Statutory Reporting and Consolidation Officer, I&M Bank
Overall, the company has had short term and long term AARO benefits after collaborating with AARO consultants. Today, end users at I&M Bank think AARO has made their work easier. They also think AARO is faster because now they can send and retrieve figures easily.
Paul Ngunya and his team enjoy AARO’s visualisations that allow them to monitor their balance sheets, P&L, and intercompany workflows so that they can see the specific reports needed for the period. In addition, AARO dashboards make tracking the flow of goodwill calculations are a breeze.
“The system is fast – you input numbers and the resulting figures are calculated immediately.”
Paul Ngunya, Statutory Reporting and Consolidation Officer, I&M Bank
AARO has helped I&M Bank optimize their entire group consolidation workflow. For example, when monitoring other subsidiary closings, Paul Ngunya is able to see each company’s progress compared to overall group.
Today I&M Bank is leveraging a streamlined group consolidation process that allows them to automate and customize notes on financial statements, maintain and update information in a single AARO database and perform audits more easily and quickly.
Paul Ngunya and his global team are so pleased with AARO and the support of the AARO team that he could not identify any challenges to I&M Bank business and processes.
Challenge
- Inefficient data collection from subsidiaries based in different countries.
- Excel based manual calculations and data management.
- Need for a less complicated and transparent closing process workflow.
Solution
- AARO visualizations and dashboards provide a general overview of periods.
- AARO easy-to-use functionality.
- AARO notes automation and customization in financial statements.
Outcome
- More transparent closing process – better global subsidiary overview.
- Easily performed audits because data is stored in a single AARO database.
- Seamlessly able to gather data from multiple subsidiaries and consolidate figures.
