Success Stories
Re-engineering Mortgage sales and underwriting system
Customer: One of the largest retail and corporate banks in Europe
Customer Requirement: Re-engineering the existing mortgage sales and underwriting system to create a new sales process that improves customer service and reduces costs.
Business Problem
The mortgage applications at the client's end were registered and processed through the client's proprietary applications. This consumed a lot of time for processing a mortgage application and, because of the growing customer and intermediaries network, this application turned out to be more cumbersome and very difficult to manage.
The Mortgage Sales Process project was taken up with the following objectives:
- To re-engineer the New Mortgage Sales and Underwriting System
- To bring the existing thick client functionality to the back-end main frame
- To identify and develop common components to cater to the Mortgage application immediately, and to other banking applications in due course
- To enable the present system to communicate with the common interfaces of host and third party applications.
HCL's Solution
HCL solution had the following features:
- The system was designed and implemented on a three-tier architecture with the front-end screens being developed using ASP technology.
- The middle-tier logic was developed using Visual Basic implementing the COM methodology on IIS/MTS platform and with an MQ interface to the IBM Mainframe back-end.
- The back-end held the application logic, written in COBOL, and maintained the DB2 database.
The new solution, built by HCL, is an integral part of New Mortgage Sales Underwriting System and interfaces with the bank's system, printing system, and with external systems for credit search underwriting decisions. The solution is accessed by end-users in branches through the banks' intranet.
The solution is designed on a three-tier architecture with the front-end screens being developed using ASP technology. A layered architecture has been adopted with the presentation layer separate from business logic. The client is browser-based, and is supported by fourth generation browsers. Communication between the client and the web server is established by HTTPs. The scripting platform for the front-end ASP screens is developed in Java script. The middle-tier logic was developed using Visual Basic implementing the COM methodology on IIS/MTS platform and with an MQ interface to the IBM mainframe back-end. Connectivity between the application server and the host is through an existing component, which is developed in C++ and MQ series, running over TCP/IP.
Results and Key Benefits
- Deliver funds at point of sale: The new solution will provide an immediate customer underwriting decision at point of sale and will allow 50% of these applications to be completed on the same day.
- Increase productivity: Unnecessary processing requirements will be removed and the use of existing customer data will be maximized. The improved service will be capable of delivering 80% of underwriting decisions at the point of sale.
- Provide a training mode: As part of this project a training mode for the solution was developed and implemented to facilitate training.
- Recognize customer relationships: A subsequential benefit of Mortgage Sales Process, is the optimal use of customer data held in the bank's other systems and external data sources like Credit Reference Agency.
- Multi-channel capability: The process can be delivered across state channels.
- Radically redesigning documents and literature: The changes to be made to mortgage literature and documentation to support the new processes were made along with, whereever possible, anticipated changes needed under the FSA regime.
- Maximize cross group sales: General Insurance cross sales will be an integral part of the quotation routine of the solution.
- Increase in Performance: System usage during peak hours is only 800 MIPS (million instructions per second), which is very much within the limits desired by the bank.
- Customer satisfaction: Apart from decreasing the total time taken for a Mortgage sale, the bank has also achieved customer satisfaction by automating the underwriting decision process to a large extent and providing online results
