Allianz Bank Bulgaria implemented Oracle FLEXCUBE

Client background

Allianz Bank Bulgaria is part of the Allianz Group, one of the leading global insurance and asset management companies that operates in 70+ countries. As a universal commercial bank, the client provides general insurance, retirement provision, mortgage loans, e-banking, leasing, and other financial services to more than 1,3 million individual and corporate customers across Bulgaria.

• Client: Allianz Bank Bulgaria
• Cooperation period:
• Location: Bulgaria
• Industry: Financial services
• Website: https://www.allianz.bg/

Business challenge 

Oracle FLEXCUBE is a holistic digital platform widely used by financial institutions to modernize their core banking systems. At the beginning of our collaboration, Tieto Tech Consulting helped Allianz Bank Bulgaria to navigate through the functionality of the system and perform simple modifications of multiple modules.

Consequently, the client decided to implement two new Oracle FLEXCUBE modules – Mortgages and Deposit Locker. Having won the bank’s trust with successfully provided consulting services, Tieto Tech Consulting was selected as its key IT partner for the upcoming project which had to tackle the following challenges:

• Enhance customer experience by streamlining safe deposit and mortgage services
• Boost operational efficiency and employee satisfaction by automating manual front and back office tasks
• Improve process transparency and break down cross-departmental silos
• Substitute the use of voluminous Microsoft Excel spreadsheets with centralized and efficient data management

Solution 

The Tieto Tech Consulting team elicited the key business and technical requirements, outlined the scope of the work together with Allianz Bank Bulgaria, and proceeded to implement the Mortgages module. It covers the entire mortgage lifecycle, including loan account creation, loan initiation, collections and delinquency management, loan amendments, disbursements, etc. Once an applicant becomes a customer of Allianz Bank Bulgaria, the module creates a loan account that reports to the bank’s general ledger.

The installment payments are credited to the dedicated account, and when the amount is fully repaid, FLEXCUBE marks the account as zero-balanced and closes it.

Loan accounts are created under specific templates called “Products”, which can include different property types and contract conditions. Our team configured six mortgage products for Allianz Bank Bulgaria, each having different loan plans, tranches, and grace periods. Moreover, we configured 16 different types of component accounting for mortgage agreements, including:

• Negotiated interest rate
• Late payment penalty/interest rate
• Statutory interest rate on principal payments
• Fees for early payment, maturity period extension, changes in mortgage conditions, etc.

The next project stage involved the implementation of the Oracle FLEXCUBE Deposit Locker module, which is designed to streamline safe deposit services and vaultbox management. Our experts configured the module to enable automated customer account creation, deposit box fee and rental payment collection, and rental prolongation.

To improve the visibility and management of deposit boxes for the client, we structured the boxes across the vaults of each bank branch by mapping them in Oracle FLEXCUBE. This enables the responsible employees to quickly access each vault and view its installation date, availability, and a range of other parameters.

Furthermore, the client wanted to optimize visitor information management, as it was previously stored in large Excel spreadsheets. To ensure accurate and convenient tracking of customers who can visit a specific deposit box, our team set up a visitor log. As a result, Allianz Bank Bulgaria can easily monitor the visit date, entry and exit time, and visitor details to ensure that only authorized users can access the deposit box.

After rolling out the new modules, our team developed a script that performed a seamless autonomous migration of customer data from the existing core banking system into Oracle FLEXCUBE. The migrated data included personal info, open accounts, balances, as well as all required mortgage contracts and deposit box data.

In addition, Allianz Bank Bulgaria requested to create a notification system that would inform customers about the due deposit box rental payments. As Oracle FLEXCUBE is designed for internal reporting and doesn’t support customer notifications, Tieto Tech Consulting proposed and delivered a custom mailing service based on Oracle BI. Operating in a semi-manual mode, it automatically generates PDF notifications and forms a customer email list, requiring bank employees only to copy the respective email and send the ready-made notification designed in alignment with the corporate brand guidelines.

Business value 

By configuring and implementing two new Oracle FLEXCUBE modules, Tieto Tech Consulting helped Allianz Bank Bulgaria provide better customer service and streamline the financial operations of 90+ bank branches across the country. As a result, the combination of tailor-made FLEXCUBE modules and Oracle BI delivered the following benefits for our client:

• Higher employee satisfaction, enhanced operational efficiency, and optimized costs due to smart automation of routine back/front office tasks
• Improved customer experience through more flexible mortgage and safe deposit services that do not require physical presence at the bank’s office
• Microsoft Excel spreadsheets replaced with centralized FLEXCUBE-based data management that ensures complete accuracy and significantly reduces the probability of human errors
• Transparent 360-degree view of deposit boxes which improves their security and management
• Creation of a notification system that automatically generates notifications for the lease and approaching expiration date of the deposit box. Automatically generated notifications are sent to clients’ email addresses by bank employees.

Currently, Tieto Tech Consulting continues to support and monitor the performance of the implemented FLEXCUBE modules. Satisfied with the project outcomes, Allianz Bank Bulgaria plans to continue its collaboration with our team on a range of other FLEXCUBE-related projects. One of the upcoming initiatives involves the implementation of a new module – Relationship Pricing,

which is designed to improve customer loyalty by creating and managing personalized product bundling offers, discounts, cashback, and other loyalty awards. Most importantly, we are preparing to conduct a full-scale modernization of the client’s entire core banking system with the help of Oracle FLEXCUBE.

Technologies

• Oracle FLEXCUBE
• Oracle BI