Bancolombia is a group of financial services companies with more than 130 years of industry experience in Colombia. The bank offers a wide range of products and services to a diverse clientele of over seven million customers, both individual and corporate.

Bancolombia wanted to provide their executives and sales representatives – both of whom are frequently on the road – with uninterrupted access to email, documents, and other important functions. In addition, the bank wanted to provide corporate customers and other individuals in the financial sector with consistent access to financial reports and the Colombian stock market.

To improve internal communications, Bancolombia equipped over 2,200 employees from 800 branches with BlackBerry smartphones, including built-in email, calendar and task management functionality. “Our employees can now use email as if they were sitting in front of their desktop computers,” said David Zuluaga Arango, Infrastructure Analyst at Bancolombia. “In addition, our managers can approve vacations and other administrative processes by email and our sales force can update their calendars and close agreements with customers, all with their BlackBerry smartphones.”

Employees now communicate with their work groups using BlackBerry Messenger (BBM). The organization has added additional users from other departments, including sales and administrative staff, and has implemented the BlackBerry Enterprise Server to manage their BlackBerry smartphones.

“The BlackBerry solution is a solid collaboration tool for the executives, who now have remote access to their email and calendars. It has simplified their access to information, offering a mobility they didn’t have before,” said Zuluaga.

To better serve customers, the bank launched a mobile banking application for BlackBerry smartphones, developed with TODO1. The Bancolombia App can be downloaded from BlackBerry World or by scanning a barcode located on the bank’s promotional ads.

In addition to its mobile banking functions, investors can use the app to obtain up-to-the-minute information on the Colombian financial market. Customers can also search for information on bank branches, ATMs, bill pay centers, and Correspondent Banks with the app, which has been downloaded over 104,000 times to date.

“We thought about what our customers needed to have in their pocket and saw that having almost immediate access to financial information from anywhere would help them make decisions, such as buying and selling currency or treasury bonds,” said Diana Marcela Arysmendi, Mobile Channels Management Analyst, Bancolombia. “I believe the Bancolombia App has brought us closer to our customers because we are more aware of their needs.”

Does your business have a BlackBerry customer success story? Share with us at success@rim.com.

The annual Regulatory Compliance Conference for the American Bankers Association (ABA) took place in Orlando this past week (June 10-14, 2012), and we were pleased to attend and support the financial services community. Eric Nicolaisen, Charles Wong and myself were there exhibiting BlackBerry® solutions that address the regulatory compliance needs for mobility. The ABA was founded in 1875, and represents all banks (foreign, national, state, and local) that operate in the United States. Their primary activity is lobbying for policy and political presence in Washington, DC.

The key buzzwords at the Conference were Dodd-Frank, FINRA, and SOX, which address issues such as consumer protection & advocacy, archiving of oral & written communications, and auditing. Recent success stories around call recording and BlackBerry® Mobile Voice System were prominently featured, and invoked further discussions around BlackBerry® Mobile Fusion, BlackBerry® Balance™, and solutions to assist in facing the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trend as banks are slowly allowing their employees to connect their personal devices to corporate messaging and applications.

Case studies that were showcased included Nomura (2012 Wireless Achievement Award Winner at BlackBerry World™) and Bank Am Bellevue. These EMEA-based banks had to comply with the UK’s FSA 10/17 Policy for Call Recording, and in each case, these banks achieve regulatory compliance. The case studies were relevant to all banks that operate in the UK and are engaged in activities that are regulated by FSA Policy 10/17, in addition to recent policies on archiving written & oral communications in Dodd-Frank. (Case studies are also posted at www.blackberry.com/mvs if you wish to read further on this)

BlackBerry’s presence at the conference was undoubtedly strong; many individuals were stopping us in the exhibit hall or even the elevators to share their passion for their BlackBerry devices. We were particularly excited to make attendees aware of the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet running OS 2.0. After demonstrating the features and capabilities, their first impressions were fantastic, especially for the winner of the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet that was drawn for a prize. Special congratulations go out to Mary Clouthier, VP of Enterprise Compliance at Fifth Third Bank, a major bank based in the midwest. To say she was happy about winning would be an understatement – she immediately asked where she could purchase a HDMI cable and BlackBerry® Mini Keyboard.

If you’ve come out of the conference hungry for more, check out details on BlackBerry solutions for the financial services industry, read more case studies, and don’t miss the CIO’s Guide to Call Recording with BlackBerry smartphones.

What regulations does your industry need to comply with? How have mobile solutions helped enable compliance? Share in the comments below.