CASE STUDY

Archiving an entire Retail & Commercial Bank in 12 months.

Challenge

Our client, a large UK Retail & Commercial Bank, needed to wind down its outsourced IT Operations for its Irish subsidiary within a year.

The client had a requirement to repatriate data to the UK for a closed portfolio, and to store and service associated customer and account data requests. However, the investment required and delivery timelines for an off the shelf archiving solution did not allow the client to meet their strategic goals.

We were engaged to help the client form an alternative solution, and enable the realisation of substantial time constrained cost transformation objectives.

Approach

To meet (and exceed) our client’s objectives, we…

  • Completed an accelerated discovery phase, building a robust and achievable plan, and obtaining buy in from the client’s business and IT functions
  • Captured our client’s data, security, and customer/operational requirements in detail
  • Formed an end to end data strategy and vision for stakeholder approval
  • Designed, built and tested a bespoke app portal to enable friendly data retrieval and reporting
  • Rolled out training to colleagues, implemented the solution, and embedded an ongoing technical support framework

Outcome

By partnering closely with our client, we delivered a solution that enabled:

  • Secure and compliant management of customer and account data
  • Seamless and efficient servicing of ongoing customer data subject access requests and reporting
  • Timely exit of outsourced IT supplier and licensing contracts (c. £10m p.a.)
  • Wind down of broader operational outsourced contracts and property leases (c. £20m p.a.)
  • Ongoing saving through newly implemented data retention policies and processes
CASE STUDY

Building a rapid bulk extract tool for a large banking regulatory remediation programme.

Challenge

Our client, a large UK Retail Bank, engaged us to assist with the extraction of customer documents and data for one of their large retail mortgage portfolios.

The data was required to complete a time bound regulator initiated rectification programme, and the sheer number of man hours required to collate the information needed exceeded the deadline set.

We were engaged to design and build an alternative method of extracting this data from multiple platforms and systems.

Approach

To help our client meet their regulatory obligations we:

  • Detailed and documented the data requirements
  • Assessed the platforms that housed the data
  • In partnership with the client’s IT team, we gained suitable and compliant access to relevant environments
  • Built and tested extraction automation scripts and applications to extract and collate customer files into organised folders
  • Rolled out training to operations colleagues and implemented the tool into production (well within the required timelines)

Outcome

By using compliant, but ‘unconventional’ EUC designs, we enabled the client to:

  • Meet their regulatory obligations on time
  • Gain access to the data in a cohesive and secure manner
  • Save over 100 FTE of manual effort
  • Gain ongoing value though tools that they can re-use on other initiatives
CASE STUDY

Supporting a UK Commercial Bank with their IBOR transition.

Challenge

Our client, a large UK Commercial Bank, engaged us to support their transition from Inter bank lending rates (IBOR) to alternate reference rates (ARR).

The client needed to complete the transition by the end of 2021, and to do so would need to complete legal due diligence on all impacted lending, as well as contact all customers to inform them of their options, capture their intentions and repaper their contracts.

The client needed a way to record all aspects of the customer transition journey against an evolving set of requirements.

We were engaged to build a bespoke workflow tool that served as the programme’s golden record of transition, as well as process thousands of legal due diligence questionnaires.

Approach

Working closely with the client and their legal partners, we promptly:

  • Designed an end to end data management flow for exchange of legal due diligence
  • Built and implemented data extraction, organisation and upload tools for their paralegal team to pass document bundles to an external law firm for processing
  • Built a means of machine-reading due diligence questionnaires using XML to automatically extract key facts for downstream consumption
  • Designed and built a robust workflow tool to enable Relationship Managers to track the end-to-end customer transition

Outcome

By building a compliant set of time saving end-user computing (EUC) tools, we helped our client:

  • Meet their regulatory obligations on time
  • Process and analyse complex datasets in an user-friendly manner
  • Allow over 300 Relationship Managers to service thousands of customers effectively through the transition
  • Automate the production of transition proposal and other customer communications packs
  • Gain ongoing value though tools that they can re-use on other initiatives
CASE STUDY

Helping a multinational insurance and healthcare group exit non-strategic markets.

Challenge

Our client, a large insurance and healthcare group, sought to exit certain international insurance markets it no longer deemed strategic, in conjunction with decommissioning one of its main policy administration systems.

This required communication with customers, partners and brokers, along with termination of thousands of policies. The data required for delivery was fragmented and spread across multiple systems.

The client had not fully investigated the extent of the data complexity ahead of enacting the programme, which led to considerable time pressure to deliver results quickly.

Approach

In order to meet hard deadlines of the system decommissioning, we:

  • Created a highly-detailed project plan for delivery of the relevant data, tools and wider actions required to deliver market exit
  • Undertook detailed analysis of a variety of datasets from multiple systems, instituting data quality and consistency checks, to create a ‘single source of the truth’
  • Performed cohort analysis on the resultant data for different markets
  • Created user-friendly bespoke tools for non-data experts to deliver the changes such as policy terminations in the relevant markets

Outcome

Through detailed data analysis and planning, we were able to:

  • Deliver a seamless market exit from the broker and customer perspective
  • Free up front line staff were freed from manual Excel work
  • Ensure that deadlines for system decommissioning were met
  • Simplify certain data processes for a long-term saving for the client
CASE STUDY

Designing and building remediation calculators and processes for a large Retail Bank.

Challenge

Our client, a large Retail Bank, had identified a several issues in the way they had applied charges on one of their mortgage portfolios (over a number of years).

Owing to this portfolio being on a  legacy mortgage core banking platform, the operational and transactional account data was proving extremely challenging for them to mine.

We were engaged to help them build a clear and robust view of their position, and form processes to redress and compensate their customers.

Approach

Three separate scenarios were identified by the client operations, their IT team and the client’s outsourced mortgage servicing provider. We…

  • Completed a prompt assessment of the data and it’s reliability
  • Formed an approach to forming ‘actual’ and ‘ideal’ transactional histories
  • Gained stakeholder backing, and designed and built right fight processes for each scenario (SAS, Excel, Word and more)
  • Separated accounts in cohorts/categories to ensure the operational response was efficient
  • Clearly calculated detriment, redress and compensation
  • Built automated processes for customer contact and resolution, and trained operational staff

Outcome

By building compliant, end user computing (EUC) designs, we enabled our client to:

  • Ensure their customers were compensated promptly and accurately
  • Resolve all three scenarios within regulator set timelines
  • Hold a clear set of auditable reports and calculator outputs
  • The data to help their IT teams forward fix their core banking platform
CASE STUDY

Supporting a Big 4 bank’s legacy Irish EUC platform.

Challenge

Our client, a large UK Retail Bank, had closed down their Irish subsidiary resulting in the decommission of c20 legacy systems. A robust EUC platform had been developed by the Fredward team as a means of accessing core records that would be accessed regularly by the legacy operations team over the next 10 years in alignment with the banks’ records management policy.

The bank needed a way of retaining Fredward’s specialist knowledge of the datasets, on-going maintenance and enhancements, as well as ensuring that appropriate records were purged to remain in compliance with retention policies.

Approach

Fredward was engaged to provide support and maintenance to the EUC platform. We…

  • Agreed service levels for client response times based on query types
  • Set up dedicated channels by which the client could communicate with the specialist Fredward team to raise service tickets
  • Set pricing based on an average of 3-4 full time support days per calendar month having assessed the types of queries over the previous 12 months and the levels of queries based on current / on-going business activities
  • Fully documented all support activities so that Bank’s IT function can take over support activities as backup

Outcome

By providing development and maintenance support services to the bank, we enabled our client to:

  • Retain corporate memory on legacy data sources at a fraction of the cost of paying for full time consultants
  • Gain peace of mind that their end users are supported even as the environment changes, e.g. moves to MS Office 365, replatforms from Windows 7 to Windows 10
  • Remain compliant with records management policies, GDPR subject access request SLAs and Financial Ombudsman queries

Discover how our passion for data can work for you.