I wanted to share an update on some activity at Augment over the past two months.
Client Activity
As I mentioned in my previous update, we began working with a top 30 bank in their credit organization. Our work has been well-received and we are currently discussing extension opportunities into 2024. We still have an opportunity to fill an open role in the credit organization if the team member has enough relevant credit analytics experience and can commit to being available 9-5 throughout the week for 40 hours a week of work.
We are also finalizing a proposal to support the Chief Credit Risk Officer with stress testing and loss forecasting analytics. And we onboarded a consultant to the bank’s Property & Casualty unit in October. As we land and expand, I hope to identify more opportunities across a broader array of job families.
I am proud to tell you that the mid-sized fintech I mentioned in my last update is now a client. We began providing part-time compliance advisory support for them in late October, a project that will run until at least mid-2024.
The Process Excellence Opportunity
The biggest potential opportunity remains at a top 50 bank supporting their very large process excellence initiative. We have a pending proposal to provide data analytics support and will be meeting with their head of Data Governance next week before the client gives us the green light. Ultimately, that process excellence program could leverage a large number of people to help them accelerate their discovery and process mapping activities which are currently slated to run at least into 2025. Our data analytics work will start as a pilot project but will likely also gain steam. And as we enter 2024, new data governance program requirements will likely be added to the plate of the process excellence group.
On a related, but slightly tangential need, we are increasing our support for the bank’s effort to realign its risk management framework to better support the needs of both the first line as the risk owner and the second line as the effective challenger. We have a proposal to provide program management support on that realignment initiative which will likely include work with their current and future-state GRC tools. And I have met several times with the CRO over the past month. He continues to tell me that they will look first to Augment for staff aug support as they prepare for all of the initiatives they intend to tackle in 2024.
The Economy
While we continue to grow, I am also conscious of the fact that the economy is starting to weaken. There are a growing number of indicators that tell us the Fed’s aggressive rate hikes from the past 2 years are achieving their stated objective of slowing down inflation. I know that means that many employers will be hiring less as a result. But I am confident that fractional staff augmentation can be a great alternative to full-time hiring. And many of our team members have experience in risk, credit, and collections/recoveries, which are highly sought after as delinquencies rise. I will continue to hunt for new opportunities for everyone on the Augment platform.
