ING Vysya Bank Ltd

Case Study
ING Vysya Bank Ltd
Differentiation through Corporate Internet banking
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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.
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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
Lifecycle following
consistent,
userPRINCE2 Project
friendly framework
Management method
and is based on the
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
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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
interoperability with
to be co-located to
security application
Bangalore
during
critical
activities • Serving corporate and
SME clients from shared
like UAT and User
platform
Acquaintance. Because
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.
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Case Study
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.
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
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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.