A cooperative bank faces the same regulatory obligations as a large commercial bank: the same requirements imposed by the Polish Financial Supervision Authority (KNF) and the same expectations when it comes to audits and inspections. The difference lies in the resources available. A large bank can address these obligations with sophisticated IT systems developed over many years. A cooperative bank is more likely to rely on Excel spreadsheets, paper registers, and the good memory of individual employees. The obligations are similar, but the budgets are usually very different.
A low-code platform does not have to solve all of these problems at once. It works particularly well where there is a need for a small, targeted application that does not replace the core banking system, but instead closes a specific gap alongside it. Such an application can typically be implemented in weeks rather than months, while the cost may be comparable to the annual cost of a single full-time employee rather than a major investment in expanding the core system. For a cooperative bank, this can make the difference between addressing a problem now and postponing it indefinitely.
In projects like these, the platform provider usually brings more than just the technology itself. Know-how gained from similar implementations in commercial banks can be deliberately adapted to the specific needs and scale of a cooperative bank.
Let’s look at three specific areas where these gaps commonly arise.
I. Branch Reporting That Becomes Outdated Before It Reaches Head Office
A cooperative bank with several branches regularly collects operational reports from them, covering areas such as sales, quality, and risk. In practice, this usually means an Excel spreadsheet distributed to individual branches, completed manually by employees, and sent back to head office for consolidation. The process itself takes time, which means that by the time the data reaches decision-makers, it may already be somewhat outdated.
A single data-entry point accessible from every branch, with automatic consolidation and a real-time overview, addresses the problem at its source. It eliminates the time spent manually collecting spreadsheets and reduces the risk of errors when combining multiple files into one. Head office sees the data much closer to the moment it is generated, rather than a week later.
II. Monitoring Loan Agreement Conditions — When the System Tracks Repayments Well, but Other Obligations Less So
Banking systems are very good at monitoring one part of a loan agreement: repayment deadlines. An instalment has either been paid or it has not — an event that is relatively easy to monitor automatically. Other contractual conditions are more difficult to track: annual life insurance renewals, collateral reviews, property valuation updates, and confirmation of property insurance. These conditions need to be verified periodically over time rather than recorded as one-off events.
In cooperative banks, particularly in smaller branches, such conditions are often monitored manually. An employee remembers the requirement, checks the customer’s file, and perhaps records the deadline in an Excel spreadsheet. This works well until the portfolio grows or something else becomes more urgent. The problem arises when the bank needs to demonstrate that a particular condition has in fact been monitored on an ongoing basis. A note kept in an analyst’s head is difficult to present as evidence, while knowledge about what needs to be checked and when may be scattered across several employees.
A register of recurring conditions linked to a specific agreement and customer can be enough to solve the problem. Add automatic reminders sent to the responsible employee, escalation if no action is taken, and a record of who verified what and when. There is no need to modify the core banking system, and the resulting audit trail is ready to be presented whenever an inspection or audit takes place.
III. Functional Controls at Branches: A Requirement That Still Often Lives in a Paper Register
Under the Polish Financial Supervision Authority’s recommendations concerning banks’ internal control systems, ongoing managerial supervision of branch activities should be properly documented, for example through a signature, system confirmation, or report.
In many cooperative bank branches, this requirement is still fulfilled using paper-based control registers. Formally, the obligation is met. In practice, finding evidence of a specific control performed six months ago means searching through a binder rather than retrieving a record from a system — something that can become problematic when an unexpected audit takes place.
Checklists assigned to a particular branch and employee, electronic confirmation of completion with a date, and a complete history that can be quickly presented during an internal audit or regulatory inspection. That is all it takes to turn paper records into a searchable database.
The Common Thread
These three areas have one thing in common. Today, they still rely heavily on the memory and diligence of individual employees, even though the processes themselves are formally defined in the bank’s procedures. Nobody deliberately designed them this way. They simply never had a dedicated place in the bank’s systems.
A low-code platform can provide that place without requiring the bank to replace its core banking system or make an investment beyond the reach of a typical cooperative bank. Instead of one large-scale implementation, the bank can introduce a series of smaller, targeted applications on a shared platform, one by one, wherever a gap exists today.
For a bank that manages its budget carefully, the question surrounding process digitalisation is increasingly less about whether it can afford to do it — and more about where to start.
