Case Study ING Vysya Bank Ltd Differentiation through Corporate Internet banking www.infosys.com/finacle Universal Banking Solution Systems Integration Consulting Business Process Outsourcing
Profile ING Vysya Bank Ltd is a premier private sector bank with retail, private and wholesale banking platforms that serve over two million customers. With over 80 years of history in India and leveraging ING s global financial expertise, the Bank offers a broad range of innovative and established products and services, across its 527 branches. The Bank, which has close to 10,000 employees, is also listed in Bombay Stock Exchange Limited and National Stock Exchange of India Limited. ING Vysya Bank was ranked among top 5 Most Trusted Brands among private sector banks in India in the Economic Times Brand Equity Nielsen survey 2011. For more information, visit www.ingvysyabank.com. ING is a global financial institution of Dutch origin offering banking, investments, life insurance and retirement services to meet the needs of a broad customer base. With more than 97,000 employees*, serving over 75 million* private, corporate and institutional customers in over 40 countries in Europe, North America and Latin America, Asia and Australia. * Numbers will be adjusted when the divestments of ING Direct USA is closed Overview The challenge ING Vysya bank s existing Internet banking solution suffered from lack of integration, coding problems and architectural inefficiencies, all of which impacted the quality of user experience. Integrating the solution was imperative, but was also riddled with challenges, such as the existence of numerous platforms. The solution Finacle Corporate e-banking was offered as a comprehensive multi channel offering delivering rich, intuitive and personalized user experiences catering to the individual needs of retail, small to medium and large enterprise customers. Built on a robust, scalable and extensible architecture, it is easily configurable and allows for seamless deployment with multiple host systems through the configurable Host Interface Layer. The benefit Finacle Corporate e-banking has improved customer satisfaction and service, and enabled the bank to differentiate itself from competition. 02 Case Study
Key business drivers A robust and integrated internet based delivery channel Until 2009, the bank had disparate Internet banking delivery channels for viewing account balances, transactions, payables and receivables management and so on, each requiring a separate login and password. Obviously, this did not make for great customer experience. In addition, the existing platform needed frequent ethical hacking tests. Poor coding, architectural inefficiencies and interface challenges led to several data integrity issues. At the same time, there was intense competition between banks to serve the lucrative Corporate customer segment. Although a range of products and services were available, there was little to differentiate between them. It was felt that the only way to maintain an edge over competition was by offering a comprehensive Internet banking solution with superior user experience which is seamless and secure. A robust and integrated channel was needed, one which would offer a unified channel experience to Corporate and SME clients, thereby meeting their needs and creating stickiness in the process. The bank decided that the way forward lay in an integrated approach to account relationship management and innovative product development. Solution overview Infosys Corporate e-banking promises convergence Accordingly, the vendor selection process was initiated and 3 products were evaluated. The project was awarded to Infosys on the strength of its considerable project experience, implementation capabilities and endorsement from clients. Its experience in marketing and interfacing also worked in its favour. Finacle Corporate e-banking solution promised convergence of all customer requests on one application. It held out the promise of flexibility, scalability, sustainability, security and reliability. Moreover, it enabled addition of new Corporate Banking products and services on an ongoing basis. This was in alignment with the Bank s long-term vision of growing the cash management business and the decision to pursue a breakout strategy. Implementation: a clear-cut approach The project mandate was issued in August 2009, and was commissioned in December the same year. The program followed SOLUTION OVERVIEW the GPL (Generic Finacle ebanking Project Lifecycle), Solution an ING standard for Flexible, scalable, secure project management, which provides a Generic Project consistent, userfriendly framework PRINCE2 Project Lifecycle following and is based on the Management method PRINCE2 project management method. Where others would have opted for a plain vanilla product, the business team came up with some innovative ideas for special features, which could be built around the Infosys product framework as a wrapper. The project followed a typical implementation cycle. Initiation, requirement gathering and planning were completed within 8 weeks. The User Acquaintance session and offshore development activity spanned a period of 6 to 8 months. System Integration Testing (SIT) took 3 weeks after which the bank conducted User Acceptance Testing (UAT) for a period of 4 months. This Case Study 03
involved multiple rounds of testing with various teams business, operations, IT and so on and was followed by penetration and security testing. The Infosys team supported these activities with rigorous rounds of testing. The project was now ready for pilot implementation. The product was tested by the Bank s internal users as well as some Preferred and Corporate customers, who were given access to the solution. After a month of beta testing, the new Internet banking platform, ING Converge, was ready to be opened to the public. It went live in March 2011 and the Infosys team continued to support it for another 2 months. Challenges galore The project had its share of challenges. CHALLENGES The project team Interfacing with 8 members were different platforms spread out in different locations and had Ensuring to be co-located to interoperability with Bangalore during security application critical activities Serving corporate and like UAT and User SME clients from shared Acquaintance. Because platform the timelines were extremely stringent, the team had to proactively identify bottlenecks to avoid adversely impacting any milestone. The most important challenge was that the Internet banking channel had to be interfaced with 8 other platforms, each of which was unique in terms of architecture, interface definition, coding standards and underlying Operating System. If each interface layer were custom coded to the target platform, it would have added 50% to the project cost and 9 months to the project time. The solution was found in the form of an open standards-based EAI. The integration of RSA SecurID with the Internet banking solution also posed a problem because of platform inter-operability. Custom coding method was adopted to skirt this issue. At ING Vysya Bank, Corporate clients belong to the Wholesale Banking Unit while SME clients belong to the Retail Banking Unit. But now, both Corporate and SME clients were to be serviced through the shared Internet banking platform and hence, there was a need to distinguish between the two. The team displayed its creativity by building an SBU-based style sheeting to display different branding for each. A well-defined governance structure The project adhered to a formal governance structure with a top level steering committee which met every month and tracked progress. The core project team consisted of 35 members from diverse functional areas across various partner organizations, operating in a matrix like structure. They were drawn from teams like Product Management (Corporate and SME Banking), Operations (Centralized), Technology, Integrated Risk and so on. Weekly operational committee meetings were held and issues that threatened to throw the project out of gear were escalated on time. The strong project management skills of both partners were clearly evident. Business benefits: moving ahead of competition The feature-richness of ING Converge has enabled the bank to move ahead of peers. The platform has received glowing feedback from the end users owing to its differentiators like real time reporting of balances, online reporting of accounts held with other banks and also transaction initiation capabilities. Customer impact With the new corporate banking solution, the Bank expects a 2-digit growth in customer base. A total of 1300 Corporate clients had signed up for ING Converge until April 2012. The first two months saw adoption rates double with 1,500 unique logins. 04 Case Study
The product has also contributed to improvement in customer service by providing anytime, anywhere banking for Corporate and SME clients, while also enabling secure, real time transactions. Financial impact Thanks to the project, the bank in the period leading upto April 2012 had processed, through the Internet Banking channel, about 8000 fund transfers of total value exceeding INR 220 Crores. The incremental fee-based and interest income on account of the new platform is likely to enable recovery of 80% of the project cost within 24-30 months. The self-service Internet banking channel will also facilitate cost savings by which the bank can regain the rest of the expenditure over a 5-year period. Operational benefits: convergence and more As the name suggests, the strong point of ING Converge is the coming together of all applications on one platform rendering multiple logins and passwords unnecessary. One of the important advantages of the new system is the secure and easy access to Balances, Transaction Reporting and Transaction Initiation through a Single Sign on (SSO) mechanism. The two-factor authentication facility adds another layer of security to the Internet banking platform. Customers now have to provide a 2nd factor password (what you have) authentication in addition to the standard login password (what you know) for all financial transactions. This platform also enables real time viewing of account balances online. Customers can get a consolidated view of group accounts including those held with other banks, a facility which Group Treasurers and CFOs find useful. Payments can be initiated in unitary or bulk mode across payment types checks, demand drafts and electronic fund transfers. This Internet banking system has strong reporting capabilities and also provides Cheque collection reports, virtual accounts solution - ING Inwards for electronic collection, and online service requests. The platform is also integrated with the bank s back office systems and facilitates statement downloads in a variety of formats. In addition, a user profile-based access to view and transact on select accounts products/transaction types not only makes access secure but also flexible, reliable and convenient. BUSINESS BENEFITS Expectation of 2-Digit growth in customer base 8000 funds transfer of value exceeding INR 220 Crores, processed by April 2012 Improved customer service Anytime anywhere secure corporate banking transactions 1 USD = 53.06 INR (As of 31ast Dec 2011) The bank recently won the DQ CIOL award for the best project in India, 2011, and also the Asian Bankers Award for Best Corporate Internet Banking Initiative Award 2012. Quotes The fact that Infosys brought deep engineering skills and sound technical consulting capabilities is a given what was of strategic value was their desire and determination to make this transformational initiative succeed. We couldn t have made a better choice for this very important engagement! Aniruddha Paul Head IT Change Delivery, at ING Vysya Bank Case Study 05
About Finacle Finacle from Infosys partners with banks to transform process, product and customer experience, arming them with accelerated innovation that is key to building tomorrow s bank. For more information, contact Finacleweb@infosys.com www.infosys.com/finacle 2012 Infosys Limited, Bangalore, India, Infosys believes the information in this publication is accurate as of its publication date; such information is subject to change without notice. Infosys acknowledges the proprietary rights of the trademarks and product names of other companies mentioned in this document.