National Association of Banks Modernizes Credit Information Sharing

The client is a Philippine credit bureau established by an association of banks to facilitate the exchange of credit information among member banks and subscribers.

The client’s long running Loan Information System was a client-server system with an MS-DOS front-end that needed to be modernized. The primary goal was to shorten the turnaround time for credit information requests and submissions from five days to three. They would be able to do this mainly by eliminating the manual sending and receiving of credit reports and replacing this process with an easy-to-use system that can be accessed with a web browser. This approach would make life easier for the IT group as well since they would not need to re-install the front-end software each time an enhancement is rolled out.

SVI was engaged by the client to develop and implement the web-based system. Working closely with the client’s user committee and IT department, SVI rewrote the system using Java and Google Web Toolkit running under Oracle Glassfish server with IBM DB2 at the back-end.

During implementation, SVI conducted several user demo presentations to orient the member banks to help their users ease the transition to the rich user interface that is now available with modern browsers.

The new generation application, aptly named Loandex II, allowed the user to provide immediate answers to credit information requests from other banks making information sharing more convenient. It also eliminated the manual sending and receiving reports since these can now be downloaded directly from the website. Partial reports became available before close of business on the same day of the request, while the full report is now available within the goal of three days.

What made implementation smooth was SVI’s approach of moving the PC-version to a web-version while retaining the existing business rules. With the success of the project, the credit bureau has set its sights on integrating the Thrift Bank Loan System with Loandex II. SVI has been tapped to do that project as well.