Early Warning System (EWS) Development for a Major Retail Commercial Bank
Project Essence
Due to Early Warning System implementation our client got:
- EWS integration with existing banking systems and microservices.
- Implementation of Online and Offline monitoring systems.
- Development of user role models.
- Implementation of the decision-making module Progress Corticon.
In 90% of cases, EWS notification occurred in less than 3 seconds.
About our client
Our client is a Central European bank (further referred to as “the Bank”) whose history dates back to the 1990s. It puts priorities on crediting private enterprises and companies of all sizes.
Screenshots of the solution
Project background
It was necessary to design and deploy EWS to decrease the bad debt ratio in the Bank’s loan portfolio.
Our client initiated a Request for proposal (RFP). The major players of the banking software development market were invited to participate in it. One of the Bank’s main requirements was to use open-source technologies for Early Warning System development.
Challenge
The Bank’s management has always concentrated on digitization and automation of processes and workflows in their business. Even though some IT solutions for loan origination workflow have already been implemented in the Bank, they could not realize their full potential due to several constraints:
- Complicated architecture of the existing solutions.
- Different platforms origination of IT solutions used in the Bank.
- Lack of flexibility of software implemented in the Bank.
- Ineffective customer data exchange between Bank’s departments.
Understanding the fact that effective work greatly depends on smart and digital tools, the Bank decided to interconnect and automate the digital solutions implemented for different departments previously.
The technical requirements for potential vendors included the following major tasks:
- Provide convenient data access to all employees involved.
- Build and deploy software solution for Key Risk Indicators (KRIs) monitoring.
- Connect IT-solutions in different Bank’s departments into a single network.
- Provide flexibility and simplicity of KRIs configuration and adjustment.
Moreover, the client requested the usage Open Source technologies to reduce the cost of ownership and get a faster Return on Investment (ROI).
The Bank chose our team because of our expertise and experience in developing and implementing financial IT solutions for banks. Moreover, our solution strictly corresponds to the precise needs of the Bank.
Solution
EWS Implementation
Our business analyst team set up a series of meetings with the Bank’s representatives to fully analyze the requirements. Due to the deep knowledge of the banking industry our experts and Bank’s representatives quickly developed the concept of the system for corporate client monitoring.
The software solution allows the Bank to:
- Avoid loan portfolio deterioration.
- Automate loan portfolio monitoring process.
- Generate reports on the current state of the Bank’s loan portfolio.
- Automate the procedure of KRI signals processing.
- Improve the quality and speed of response to KRI signals at early stages.
- Analyze the Bank’s customers’ financial situation quickly and efficiently.
- Improve workload distribution among different Bank departments.
- Optimize the Bank’s specialists workload.
The Key Points of the Project
As a result of a series of strategy sessions with the Bank, our team selected a few areas to improve Bank’s activities in the field of bad debt processing and necessary software implementation.
The final list of the project milestones was agreed upon with our client. It included the following activities:
- Bank’s corporate client profile development.
- Key risk indicators profile implementation.
- Security notification profile development.
- Online and Offline monitoring systems implementation.
- Deployment of credit data analysis systems.
- Tunable reporting system development.
- Internal audit system implementation.
Flexible user role modeling deployment
Our team also implemented flexible setup of user role modeling. The Administrator account was created for:
- Making real-time changes of access rights.
- Setting up access to the system functions.
- Tuning up access to the accounts of the Bank’s clients, risk indicators, and tasks according to various criteria.
The issue of integration
The major problem was that the Bank had already been using several separate software solutions. But they were not integrated and worked independently. This caused the desynchronization of data exchange, requiring our IT specialists to adapt their approach to account for various modules and microservices based on different platforms.
- Integration with Windows Active Directory. Our technical team had to work on the Bank’s premises with their security and IT departments’ specialists. Together, we implemented changes and instantaneously checked their workability.
- Integration of the information security system notifications into the Bank’s external systems. Due to the lack of physical access to information security systems, our technical experts had to work with them remotely.
- Integration with Bank’s enterprise service bus (ESB). As the ESB itself and computer software in the Bank were not new and stable, our team had to adapt them to our modern tools and tune and streamline robust connections between them.
- Integration with notifications sending server. Bank’s computer software was not so advanced. That’s why our specialists had to manually rewrite our software’s program code to achieve successful integration with their systems.
Technologies and tools
- BRMS
- Mail client
- Platform
- Security
- Serial Bus
- Programming language
- Messaging system
- Protocol
- Engine
- Frontend
- Database
- Progress Corticon
- Spring Email
- Lotus Notes
- ArcSight посредством syslog
- Sonic ESB посредством протокола JMS
- Java 8
- JMS
- WebSocket
- jBPM
- Angular 8
- Oracle database
Result
In the course of EWS development, we achieved the result that in 90% of cases EWS sends notifications in less than 3 seconds.
Our team successfully solved a few problems that the Bank’s management considered crucial:
- EWS integration with the current Bank systems and microservices via Enterprise Service Bus SonicESB using JMS-protocol.
- Implementation of automated Offline monitoring of customers’ data from internal databases.
- Implementation of Online monitoring of data input by Bank’s employees manually.
- Implementation of administrator accounts to ensure the set-up of the user interface (UI), role models, decision making, and data security event monitoring.
- EWS integration with the Bank’s electronic document security system.
- Flexible notification system implementation.
- Implementation of online information updates via WebSocket protocol.
- Implementation of a decision-making module for customers’ KRIs analysis and determination of their risk status on the basis of BRMS Corticon.