Future of Community Banking Case Study: How Legacy Bank Streamlined International Wire Processing with Acceleron

One platform, one entry point: how Legacy Bank cut manual work out of international wires

A customer walks into a Legacy Bank branch needing to send money overseas. Today, they walk out with everything they need in hand. A year ago, that same request meant a second system, a second round of data entry, and a follow up email once operations could get to it. For a bank that has spent 140 years building its name on personalized service, that gap was hard to ignore.

The Challenge

Legacy Bank processed domestic and foreign wires through two separate systems. Retail staff would take in a customer's wire request and enter the details into the bank's CRM, but that system could not show the conversion rate or generate the required currency disclosure. To finish the transaction, the operations team had to log into a second system, one intended for back office use only, and reenter the same information from scratch. Only then could they generate the disclosure and email it to the customer, often after the customer had already left the branch.

The back office effectively absorbed the complexity so the front line would not have to log into two systems. It worked, but it meant duplicate data entry on every international wire, delays for customers, and a level of manual work that grew heavier as volume grew.

The Solution

Legacy Bank partnered with Acceleron, a software platform pre-integrated with Fiserv Payments Exchange, to automate the process and bring all wire types onto a single, integrated workflow. “The implementation couldn't have gone smoother,” Nienke said, “A real reflection of the strong partnership behind this project.”

Now, retail staff enter a wire once and can generate the currency disclosure on the spot, while the customer is still at the counter. Operations no longer reenters the transaction into a separate system. Their role has shifted to review, approval, and release.

"Our retail staff is able to give the disclosure at the time that they enter the wire, whereas before they would enter it, our operations team would have to generate the disclosure and email it to the customer," said Jesse Nienke, SVP of Operations at Legacy Bank. "We've eliminated that secondary step now and given everything to the hands of the retail staff sending the wire, so they can get everything done while the customer is in front of them."

The Results

The shift changed the day to day experience for two different teams at once.

For the front line, it means customers leave the branch with everything they need instead of waiting on a follow up email. "The customer can walk out knowing they have everything they need. They don't have to wait on anybody else to reach out to them," Nienke said.

For operations, it means less manual reentry and less of the anxiety that came with monitoring a second system throughout the day. "It frees up some time. I would say it frees up a little anxiety, not knowing when you have to log into the other system," Nienke said. "The important part for me is showing that operations team that we're invested in trying to make what they do as easy as possible, as frictionless as possible, so they can be effective and efficient."

Nienke said, “The implementation couldn't have gone smoother, a real reflection of the strong partnership behind this project. Proud of what our teams accomplished together."

What's Next

With domestic and outbound foreign wires now consolidated, Legacy Bank's next priority is bringing inbound international wires onto the same platform. Inbound wires tend to carry their own set of headaches: unclear SWIFT routing that arrives with incomplete transaction data, and manual entry into the payment system once the funds do arrive. Acceleron will be working to address those issues directly through automated data flow, so that incoming funds arrive already matched to the right customer and ready to reconcile.

Acceleron is a modern correspondent banking platform that empowers community banks and credit unions to automate international wire transfers, capture non-interest income, and compete more effectively with big banks. With a foreign exchange (FX) marketplace and currency conversion engine, Acceleron’s API-first infrastructure helps institutions turn cross-border payment flows into efficient, revenue-generating opportunities. Serving over 200 financial institutions and facilitating more than $1 billion in international payments annually, our correspondent banking services and international payment automation solutions are pre-integrated seamlessly with Fiserv Payments Exchange, Aptys, and other leading payments platforms.

Want to simplify your institution's wire process? Set up a quick introductory call with our team to explore what your options are: