Reduces Compliance Risk with Seismic

The Challenge 

Shifting the enablement mindset and approach 

Kristin Belanger is VP of Sales Enablement at M&T Bank who manages sales and marketing enablement platforms. Following her attendance at a sales enablement conference, she recognised that the current approach to sales enablement at M&T Bank was ineffective and required adjustment.

“I had this moment where I felt it in my gut, and I went – We’re doing it wrong. We are not helping salespeople. We need to do this differently,” said Belanger. She identified that they needed better technology, tools and coaching. 

Realising the need for a complete shift in mindset and approach posed a significant challenge, especially in a large organisation with established practices and processes. “With Seismic, we got the best of both worlds. We got this world-class platform, but then we also got the customer success model that came with it and made it just a powerful relationship,” said Belanger. 

Belanger introduced Seismic as a sales enablement platform in her department at the bank and then initiated a campaign to expand its use to other divisions. As time passed, they explored additional applications for Seismic, such as the LIBOR project, to enhance efficiency throughout the organisation and improve the sales process. 

The Solution 

Automating Content Production for LIBOR Contract Remediation

M&T Bank had to address numerous contracts that reference the LIBOR rate with varying degrees of complexity before June 2023. They hired numerous individuals to identify which contracts required attention and determine the most appropriate course of action.

Jon Storm, Vice President and senior Systems Analyst at M&T Bank was approached by the technology group tasked with discovery for finding solutions for the LIBOR remediation project. “They came to us with certain business requirements to see if Seismic could support them, and that answer turned out to be yes. We were a little surprised at the flexibility and extensibility of Seismic’s platform because we hadn’t undergone any major integrations yet. At the same time, we would meet additional goals of sales enablement, not just the LIBOR project,” explained Storm. 

The platform was able to meet the business requirements for the project and was flexible and extensible enough to allow for future solutions. The platform also enabled the bank to limit the involvement of the sales force to a single system and reduce client touchpoints, making it easier to execute the remediation of loans.

The Seismic platform enabled the team to create a folder hierarchy to organise loan amendment documents into individual Workspaces and group them in a larger folder structure. It also made it simple to delegate and modify the folder structure to manage employee transitions like leaves of absence, attrition, promotions and internal movement, resulting in easier project management.

The project achieved 100% adoption from the Relationship Managers (RMs) who had customer contracts that required LIBOR mediation. “Almost overnight we went from only dozens of people using Workspace and LiveSend among the RM population to 1,500 plus and an 80 to 85% adoption rate among the whole group of these technologies after one year in production,” shared Storm. 

After one year in production, M&T bank reached a point of 83% of loans remediated, with little to no pushback from RMs.