Credit Card Application Processing System

The Client

IKANO Financial Services Limited, a part of The IKANO Group, operates throughout Scandinavia and Germany, providing a range of easy-to-use financial services. Its UK business is based in Nottingham and was established in 1994. IKANO provides customized convenient financial products and support services, including multi-product credit services to multiple retailers, store and budget card, interest free credit and interest bearing loan agreements.

"Having worked closely with Abstract Technology over one year, we have been very pleased with the cooperation. I think both sides have had to learn about how to work together, both between cultures and between technologies. I will be hoping to work again with Abstract Technology in the future" Chris Jones, head of system department, IKANO Financial Service Ltd.

What IKANO wanted

IKANO Financial Services' key differentiators in the retail credit market are its customisable service and prompt respond to requests for new or altered services. The company needed an Application Processing System which should be economic to modify in terms of time and money, to meet the changing business requirements. Some of their expectation in the new system includes:

• To fulfil a large number of applications within a short time period both at IKANO and at its retailers.
• Applications must be processed in real time with minimal delay from initiation to decision. As instant credit is offered on all products, the responsiveness and resilience of the system are equally important.
• Applications can be processed both at IKANO by fully skilled Customer Advisors and (via wide area networks) at retail branches by semi-skilled retailer store staff.
• Application data can be captured over the Internet in a separate system and processed in the system separately.

The client also requested that all applications should use bespoke strategies which require up-to-the-minute, in-house maintenance to effectively manage risks and to minimize exposure to fraud.

Approach

Abstract Technology helped IKANO realize its goal by implementing the following main functions of the Application Processing System:

• Data capture and validation
• Address targeting
• Decision
• Record retrieval
• Change Application Status
• Account set-up into account management system
• Security and Audit
• Applicant correspondence

Abstract Technology separated the business logics from the business presentation. This increased the flexibility and scalability of the system. And the system also had COM+ packaged in the Data access layer, which supported most of the large and middle sized database. Abstract Technology optimised the algorithm in the business logic, making the system more robust and convenient.

Benefits

With the above solution, Abstract Technology developed the system to achieve the application processing with a targeted two minutes from initiation to decision, eliminating the errors and unreliability in the existing credit card application system. Other achievements included:

• Significant improvement in the time of the running cycle.
• Capability and flexibility to meet vast business requirements.
• Proved cost-effective for the client.

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