Payments Academy
Service level agreement PAYMENT OPERATIONS STARTED LIVE 01 Service level agreement - SLA, is a formal promise about the service ACTIVE 02 Important key performance indicators - most important key performance QUEUED 03 Good performance - has clear benchmarks that a manager can QUEUED 04 Dashboards - who needs them, from the product manager QUEUED 05 KPI - When a KPI turns red QUEUED A service level agreement, or SLA, is a formal promise about the service a customer will receive, with a remedy if the promise is broken. Step 1 of 5 Service level agreement STARTED Service level agreement SLA, is a formal promise about the service ACTIVE Important key performance indicators most important key performance indicators QUEUED Good performance has clear benchmarks that a manager can QUEUED Dashboards who needs them, from the product manager QUEUED KPI When a KPI turns red QUEUED A service level agreement, or SLA, is a formal promise about the service a customer will receive, with a remedy if the promise is broken.
Important key performance indicators PAYMENT OPERATIONS IN PROGRESS LIVE 01 Service level agreement - SLA, is a formal promise about the service DONE 02 Important key performance indicators - most important key performance ACTIVE 03 Good performance - has clear benchmarks that a manager can QUEUED 04 Dashboards - who needs them, from the product manager QUEUED 05 KPI - When a KPI turns red QUEUED The most important key performance indicators for a payment product fall into four groups, usage, quality, commercial performance and customer experience. Step 2 of 5 Important key performance indicators IN PROGRESS Service level agreement SLA, is a formal promise about the service DONE Important key performance indicators most important key performance indicators ACTIVE Good performance has clear benchmarks that a manager can QUEUED Dashboards who needs them, from the product manager QUEUED KPI When a KPI turns red QUEUED The most important key performance indicators for a payment product fall into four groups, usage, quality, commercial performance and customer experience.
Good performance PAYMENT OPERATIONS IN PROGRESS LIVE 01 Service level agreement - SLA, is a formal promise about the service DONE 02 Important key performance indicators - most important key performance DONE 03 Good performance - has clear benchmarks that a manager can ACTIVE 04 Dashboards - who needs them, from the product manager QUEUED 05 KPI - When a KPI turns red QUEUED Good performance has clear benchmarks that a manager can compare against. Step 3 of 5 Good performance IN PROGRESS Service level agreement SLA, is a formal promise about the service DONE Important key performance indicators most important key performance indicators DONE Good performance has clear benchmarks that a manager can ACTIVE Dashboards who needs them, from the product manager QUEUED KPI When a KPI turns red QUEUED Good performance has clear benchmarks that a manager can compare against.
Dashboards make the numbers visible to everyone PAYMENT OPERATIONS IN PROGRESS LIVE 01 Service level agreement - SLA, is a formal promise about the service DONE 02 Important key performance indicators - most important key performance DONE 03 Good performance - has clear benchmarks that a manager can DONE 04 Dashboards - who needs them, from the product manager ACTIVE 05 KPI - When a KPI turns red QUEUED Dashboards make the numbers visible to everyone who needs them, from the product manager to the operations team leader. Step 4 of 5 Dashboards make the numbers visible to everyone IN PROGRESS Service level agreement SLA, is a formal promise about the service DONE Important key performance indicators most important key performance indicators DONE Good performance has clear benchmarks that a manager can DONE Dashboards who needs them, from the product manager ACTIVE KPI When a KPI turns red QUEUED Dashboards make the numbers visible to everyone who needs them, from the product manager to the operations team leader.
KPI turns red PAYMENT OPERATIONS COMPLETE LIVE 01 Service level agreement - SLA, is a formal promise about the service DONE 02 Important key performance indicators - most important key performance DONE 03 Good performance - has clear benchmarks that a manager can DONE 04 Dashboards - who needs them, from the product manager DONE 05 KPI - When a KPI turns red ACTIVE When a KPI turns red, the product manager follows a structured response rather than reacting to the latest number. Step 5 of 5 KPI turns red COMPLETE Service level agreement SLA, is a formal promise about the service DONE Important key performance indicators most important key performance indicators DONE Good performance has clear benchmarks that a manager can DONE Dashboards who needs them, from the product manager DONE KPI When a KPI turns red ACTIVE When a KPI turns red, the product manager follows a structured response rather than reacting to the latest number.

Key points of this lesson, in order.

0:00 / 3:37 Step 1 of 5

SLAs, KPIs and Measuring Product Health

Payment Product Management, Lesson 4 of 7, Narration 3:37, D14 Business analysis and professional practice

Sanctions screeningExceptionRefund

What you will learn

Your objective. By the end of this lesson, you will be able to explain slas, kpis and measuring product health. A service level agreement, or SLA, is a formal promise about the service a customer will receive, with a remedy if the promise is broken.

Why it matters. A service level agreement, or SLA, is a formal promise about the service a customer will receive, with a remedy if the promise is broken.

Chapter objective: Learner applies product management to payments, defining a product vision, roadmap, metrics, and pricing, and writes a product brief for a new payment feature. Learner practises this skill on realistic banking cases, explaining the reasoning clearly and using correct terminology throughout the work.

Key learning points

  • Service level agreement
  • Important key performance indicators
  • Good performance
  • Dashboards make the numbers visible to everyone
  • KPI turns red

Key terms

Sanctions screening: Checking payment parties, countries and references against sanctions lists published by governments and international bodies.

Exception: A payment that cannot be processed normally and needs manual handling, investigation or repair. Exceptions arise from missing data, failed screening, account errors or system faults.

Refund: A repayment of funds to a customer after a payment fails, is cancelled or is disputed. In card payments a refund returns money to the cardholder account.

Clearing and settlement timeline showing SLAs, KPIs and Measuring Product Health.

Practise this lesson

Exercise

Work out what the beneficiary receives for a $10,000 payment under OUR, SHA and BEN.

Use the charge arrangement rules in this lesson and the correspondent and beneficiary bank fees named in the lesson.

  1. What to do. Calculate the amount credited under each of the three arrangements and state who pays each fee.

Correct result. Under OUR the sender pays all charges and the beneficiary receives the full amount. Under SHA the sender pays the sending charges and the beneficiary pays the receiving charges. Under BEN the beneficiary pays all charges and receives the amount less all fees.

Why. The charge arrangement decides who pays and how much arrives. A customer who was promised the full amount and receives less will complain, and the complaint lands on the analyst.

Check your understanding

Practice question

Which of the following best describes slas, kpis and measuring product health?

Takeaway and next step

What to remember

This discipline matters because a single bad week can be noise, but a trend over four weeks is a real problem that needs a product change, a price change or a process change.

Map the message fields from this lesson in the mapping workbench.

Open the Mapping Workbench →

Builds on "Pricing, Fees, Interchange and Commercial Models".

Transcript and full text

Show transcript

A service level agreement, or SLA, is a formal promise about the service a customer will receive, with a remedy if the promise is broken. For a corporate payment product, the SLA may promise that 99.5 percent of Faster Payments will be completed within fifteen seconds, that the service will be available 99.9 percent of the time, and that a customer query will be answered within four working hours. If the bank misses the SLA, the customer may receive a service credit, for example a refund of the monthly fee for that month. The product manager negotiates the SLA with operations and technology before the product launches, because a promise that the systems cannot keep will create claims and damage trust. The most important key performance indicators for a payment product fall into four groups, usage, quality, commercial performance and customer experience. Usage measures include the number of active customers, the number of payments per month and the total value processed. Quality measures include the straight through processing rate, the share of payments that fail, and the average time to settle. Commercial measures include revenue per customer, cost per payment and the margin. Customer experience measures include the Net Promoter Score, the number of complaints per 10,000 payments and the time to resolve a complaint. A manager reviews all four groups every month, because a product can look healthy on revenue while failing on quality. Good performance has clear benchmarks that a manager can compare against. A well run instant payment product should achieve at least 99 percent straight through processing, with fewer than 0.5 percent of payments failing for a technical reason. Availability should be at least 99.9 percent, which allows about forty three minutes of downtime a month. The average time to complete an instant payment should be under ten seconds, and the complaint rate should be below five complaints per 10,000 payments. A corporate bulk payment product should achieve 98 percent straight through processing, because bulk files contain more complex data. These benchmarks are not targets to hit once, but standards to hold every month. Dashboards make the numbers visible to everyone who needs them, from the product manager to the operations team leader. A good dashboard shows the daily volume, the straight through processing rate, the exception queue age, the revenue for the month to date and the top five reasons for payment failure. The dashboard is reviewed in a weekly meeting, where the manager asks what changed, why it changed and what will be done about it. If the failure rate for instant payments rises from 0.4 percent to 1.2 percent in a week, the manager asks technology to check whether a recent change caused the problem, and asks operations whether a particular customer file is causing the failures. The meeting ends with named actions and dates, not with general discussion. When a KPI turns red, the product manager follows a structured response rather than reacting to the latest number. First, the manager confirms the data is correct and not a reporting error. Second, the manager finds the root cause, for example a change in the sanctions screening rule that is holding 2,000 payments a day. Third, the manager agrees a fix with the owning team and a date for the fix, and communicates the impact to customers if they are affected. Fourth, the manager tracks the KPI daily until it returns to green for two consecutive weeks. This discipline matters because a single bad week can be noise, but a trend over four weeks is a real problem that needs a product change, a price change or a process change.

A service level agreement, or SLA, is a formal promise about the service a customer will receive, with a remedy if the promise is broken. For a corporate payment product, the SLA may promise that 99.5 percent of Faster Payments will be completed within fifteen seconds, that the service will be available 99.9 percent of the time, and that a customer query will be answered within four working hours. If the bank misses the SLA, the customer may receive a service credit, for example a refund of the monthly fee for that month. The product manager negotiates the SLA with operations and technology before the product launches, because a promise that the systems cannot keep will create claims and damage trust.

The most important key performance indicators for a payment product fall into four groups, usage, quality, commercial performance and customer experience. Usage measures include the number of active customers, the number of payments per month and the total value processed. Quality measures include the straight through processing rate, the share of payments that fail, and the average time to settle. Commercial measures include revenue per customer, cost per payment and the margin. Customer experience measures include the Net Promoter Score, the number of complaints per 10,000 payments and the time to resolve a complaint. A manager reviews all four groups every month, because a product can look healthy on revenue while failing on quality.

Good performance has clear benchmarks that a manager can compare against. A well run instant payment product should achieve at least 99 percent straight through processing, with fewer than 0.5 percent of payments failing for a technical reason. Availability should be at least 99.9 percent, which allows about forty three minutes of downtime a month. The average time to complete an instant payment should be under ten seconds, and the complaint rate should be below five complaints per 10,000 payments. A corporate bulk payment product should achieve 98 percent straight through processing, because bulk files contain more complex data. These benchmarks are not targets to hit once, but standards to hold every month.

Dashboards make the numbers visible to everyone who needs them, from the product manager to the operations team leader. A good dashboard shows the daily volume, the straight through processing rate, the exception queue age, the revenue for the month to date and the top five reasons for payment failure. The dashboard is reviewed in a weekly meeting, where the manager asks what changed, why it changed and what will be done about it. If the failure rate for instant payments rises from 0.4 percent to 1.2 percent in a week, the manager asks technology to check whether a recent change caused the problem, and asks operations whether a particular customer file is causing the failures. The meeting ends with named actions and dates, not with general discussion.

When a KPI turns red, the product manager follows a structured response rather than reacting to the latest number. First, the manager confirms the data is correct and not a reporting error. Second, the manager finds the root cause, for example a change in the sanctions screening rule that is holding 2,000 payments a day. Third, the manager agrees a fix with the owning team and a date for the fix, and communicates the impact to customers if they are affected. Fourth, the manager tracks the KPI daily until it returns to green for two consecutive weeks. This discipline matters because a single bad week can be noise, but a trend over four weeks is a real problem that needs a product change, a price change or a process change.

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