At echo.legal, we want to bring legal technology to a wider audience by showing how we work with our clients using document automation to create business results.
This is our client story of working with Royal Bank of Canada’s (RBC) Contract Express project.
Modifying Contract Express to work for RBC
RBC is the largest bank in Canada and a leading global financial institution.
RBC’s Wealth Management Credit business in the British Isles, provides its clients with loan products and solutions secured against real estate assets, and investments custodied with RBC.
echo.legal has been working with the team that handles the documentation element of this business, whose responsibilities involve preparing and executing facility and security documents for loans.
The background
Contract Express was originally brought in at RBC to automate historic manual document generation and improve speed of execution whilst reducing risk. But after time, the challenge became how best to modify it to support RBC’s processes and to ensure that the documentation production worked in harmony with the other elements of the end-to-end credit process.
echo.legal was recommended as the legal automation experts for this task.
Getting under the skin of loan documentation
The mortgage market and associated documentation is highly complex, with strong regulation in the UK. To start with, echo.legal worked with the team at RBC to jointly navigate these issues, providing consultancy around how things could be better structured within the automated environment of Contract Express. The teams worked together to determine what Contract Express could manage, breaking it down into chunks that allowed nuanced flows for documentation.
Our contact at RBC commented:
“Our existing processes needed improvement as they were difficult to modify because of the level of detail and regulation required. Loan structures can be very complex. The project required echo.legal to get under the skin of the existing processes and create a collaborative relationship to build, code and deliver against our objectives. Will Sumners and the team at echo.legal provided clear project management to help achieve this.”
Automating such processes is not easy. It takes time and commitment from all parties to get it done right. This was a project that pushed echo.legal to really understand what was needed from RBC’s side, and with strong collaboration and partnership throughout, the right business outcomes were delivered.
Business outcomes during the pandemic
Having done this piece of work, the results came under pressure during the COVID pandemic, when the property market ramped up significantly due to the reduction in stamp duty rates and the team had to handle a much greater volume of transaction than usual. The amount of documentation that was required to be generated through Contract Express increased significantly as a result. Having structured and developed Contract Express to be more efficient, however, the team was able to keep delivering for clients at this critical time.
RBC continued:
“We have ongoing and regular dialogue with the team at echo.legal to review work and requested improvements. They are responsive and willing to listen to feedback and suggestions, as well as being patient with queries from the ludicrous to the complicated!”
echo.legal continues to support the team at RBC as a long-term partner as they continue their document automation journey and get the most out of Contract Express. No query is ever too “ludicrous” or “complicated” for our team of automation enthusiasts.
echo.legal is owned and managed by founders and members of the original Contract Express team. We have worked on many of the world's largest deployments of Contract Express at major law firms and corporate legal departments. If you’d like to speak with one of our team about how we could partner with you, contact will.sumners@echo.legal or julie.saliba@echo.legal.