Implementation of the Fidelity Fund Certificate system, Funds collection management system and audit report submission Fidelity Fund (LPFF)
How do you streamline a complex financial process while ensuring compliance across an entire profession? This was the challenge faced by the Legal Practitioner Fidelity Fund (LPFF) after the implementation of the Act 28 of 2014, which mandated direct collection of trust interest from legal practitioners’ trust accounts. Previously handled by law societies, the LPFF needed a modern system to collect fees, manage exceptions, and ensure compliance for legal practitioners applying for fidelity fund certificates.
Implementation of the Fidelity Fund Certificate system, Funds collection management system and audit report submission Fidelity Fund (LPFF)
Impact achieved:
Practitioner Fidelity Fund(LPFF) to collect trust interest directly from the trust accounts of legal practitioners and firms. This function was previously performed by the law societies as intermediaries on behalf of the LPFF.
The LPFF required a new system to assist with the collection of fees, allocation to corresponding accounts, exception handling and reporting. The LPFF also required that we rebuild their practitioner
portal which provides a simplified and more user-friendly approach for all legal practitioners who qualify for a fidelity fund certificate to apply online as well as to allow practitioners to submit their annual audit reports to be used to determine practitioner interest compliance. Following a tender process, the LPFF engaged Boxfusion for the development of the funds collections management system and fidelity fund certificate and audit submission portal.
In 12 months the Boxfusion team was able to deliver a system to automate all its core functionalities including:
Key features of the system included:
• Workflow management and escalation on delays.
• Automated communications to clients via SMS and email.
• Automated interest collection.
• Manual interest collection(Includes EFT, Deposits etc.) and recon which allowed the LPFF to import their bank statements and automatically allocate payments made to a firm.
• Compliance monitoring which allowed the LPFF to determine which firms are complaint.
• Certificate management which allowed only compliant practitioners to apply online and be issued with a certificate.
• Online payment (credit card) allowed for the practitioners to pay the application fee via a payment gateway. The process automation and accompanying process oversight and reporting improved productivity as well as transparency of the organisation significantly.
