Aquima: Innovation with Mortgages

The effects recession are felt by businesses in all industries but none moreso than the mortgage industry, especially since a major cause of the recession was down to unsustainable increase of house prices just prior to the recession. With 67,300 houses repossessed over the five quarters between 2008 and 2009 the government had to act and act they did.

The government ploughed millions of pounds to rescue struggling mortgage providers and in turn mortgage providers had to be "sensitive" when dealing with customers who were in the red- this combined with low interest rates had crippled some of the most well known and established companies.

While the external factors were very difficult to control (in most cases impossible), many mortgage providers sought ways to cut costs internally. Many organisations opting to cut the number of staff and re-structure the organisations to achieve these goals. While cutting the number of staff cut costs it also had a negative effect on the service provided.

A well established Dutch company decided to take a different approach rather then concentrating on re-structuring the emphasis was on improving efficiency and flexibility to meet the ever changing market needs. The organisation sought the help of the Aquima developers to improve their current system.

The challenge was to provide and automated process to deal with the large number of registrations, guarantees, backlogs, foreclosures and losses (more than 120,000 forms per year). Process integration and STP were essential in this. Due to the nature of the business a high requirement was set for the automation with respect to safety, access authorisation, availability, connectivity, user numbers and the transferability of the application maintenance.

Our rule was to design, develop and maintain a mid and back-office system, to support the business process. A web-based mid and back office system RADAR was developed. the system was used to register, manage guarantees and process foreclosure losses. The system was fully automated providing the business a secure electronic communication system. The realised system was composed of various parts to support every phase of the process.

The finished system was a very efficient process support system. The Dutch company yield benefits almost instantly, The company was able to deal with a considerable increase of registration with with a very limited increase of the workforce. The system was very dynamic and flexible providing a platform for easy and safe data transfer.Employees where able to update policy changes instantly protecting the company and company reputation.

Guest post for 25th January 2010.

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