data collection and validation

Customer: Leveraged Equities – a division of Bendigo and Adelaide Bank Limited

Project description: an online application process for margin lending using the Taten iApply Online Data Capture Framework.

All client information required to set up a margin lending account is now captured and validated online.

Why it was needed:

Accuracy and completeness of data. About 60% of paper applications were continually held up for processing because a lot of information had been missed, which meant going back to the financial advisors to chase down the missing information from the client. This could take anywhere up to two weeks.

Benefits:

Helps Leveraged Equities maintain market share and do business better with clients and advisors.
Drives efficiencies and accuracies within the business, which drives a greater level of client and advisor experience.
Complete information must be provided before the application process begins.
Online validation of data before the application is accepted.
Much less human error, as the client information is captured and validated online.
Advisors and clients can save an incomplete online form if they need to chase up more information, rather than being forced to exit and start from scratch again.
The information gathering process is clear and simple to use.
The application can be done to suit the client’s timeframe while they collect all the necessary information, rather than having to continually contact the advisor and the advisor continually contacting Leveraged Equities.
A better experience for clients means it is a better experience for advisors.
It is much easier for advisors to understand exactly at what stage of the process the application for a facility is at. – not relevant to solution – just send them one email.
Drives costs down and creates efficiencies for both advisors and Leveraged Equities

Differentiation:

This is a market leading application in the margin lending and leveraged equities industry.
Dynamic pdf generation of information from the online application. The size of the pdf document dynamically changes depending on the information extracted from different sections of the online application.
The online application process is fully functional to cater for a number of different borrowers and guarantors.

Working with Taten:

“There was opportunity for both parties to throw their hands up in the air and go “I’ve had enough – this all looks too hard”. We didn’t – neither party did, we worked through it – people jumped on planes, got in rooms and nutted out the issues which I think has enabled us to deliver the finished product to the level of quality that we actually have, " said Eric Blewitt – General Manager Margin Lending – Leveraged Equities

Business snapshot:

Given the market conditions at the moment, companies tend not to invest in technology, but investing in this technology has put Leveraged Equities ahead of the pack.
Leveraged Equities set its strategy up about 2.5 years ago and the strategy was developed to cater for both bull and bear markets.
Leveraged Equities is sticking to its strategy, which means investing in technology to achieve its goals.
The margin lending business is still a good business. While the overall dollarised amounts loan outstanding is down three quarters running, the number of clients is still growing, albeit by a smaller rate. There are only a couple of hundred thousand margin loans in Australia and there are 8 million people who own direct shares. There is still a market – the rate of growth may be different and the rate of client growth may be different, but it’s still a viable business with a huge amount of upside.
Leveraged Equities is the third largest margin lender in Australia.
Brokers and planners include top 10 retail broking firms from Macquarie Bank, Goldman Sachs, Ord Minett, and Tolhurst, as well as many of the large dealer groups.
Leveraged Equities has an education process for these firms to explain the new online application process, and how it makes it easier for these firms to do business with the client and with Leveraged Equities.

Technical challenges:

Coming to terms with the margin lending business, including some of its more complex scenarios.
Transforming a difficult paper-based system into an easier to follow online system.
Taten developed a completely new pdf generating tool that creates a pdf specification which can be run through third party generation pdf components. Taten also developed a mechanism for allowing a business user to manage the application.

System description:

The application is hosted at Leveraged Equities. It has a load balanced server cluster that is spread over multiple servers to balance the load.
The session state is controlled in Taten’s database. There are multiple application servers communicating with one another to a database cluster in the back end.
The application is written in the .Net 1.1 framework. The system is designed as a message base system so the application responds to various system messages. Everything which is posted from the interface is posted as a message so it could be plugged into a different user interface experience, similar to a windows application, and still retain the same business rules engine behind the scenes. This means business rules can be centralised – one set of business rules for two systems, for example call centre operator system and another sytem of the general public.
The application runs off a centralised infrastructure, allowing Taten to drop modules in and start using them when they are built or remove them as required.

Future:

The next phase of the project is to automatically upload the information from the online application into backend systems such as Leveraged Equities’ main core operating and settlement system. This means less potential for human error and more accurate information.

Project Review:

Read the Project Review