The financial industry is changing rapidly. New initiatives from FinTech companies are transforming current revenue models and personal financial support is raising consumer expectations. Considering this, Quion decided to update the previous technology stack of their self-service portal. This required a high-end, secure, and flexible software solution that would not affect and possibly even enhance the agility of the organisation. With this portal solution, Quion can rapidly respond to trends in the financial market. This is essential to stay ahead of the competition.
Business Need: The financial industry is changing rapidly. New initiatives from FinTech companies are transforming current revenue models and personal financial support is raising consumer expectations. Considering this, Quion decided to update the previous technology stack of their self-service portal. This required a high-end, secure, and flexible software solution that would not affect and possibly even enhance the agility of the organisation. With this portal solution, Quion can rapidly respond to trends in the financial market. This is essential to stay ahead of the competition.
Solution: For Quion to overcome their initial challenges, a robust and future proof solution was required in the form of a portal application that served both their internal and external customers. The initial goal for the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) was to replace their existing legacy portal, including all available functionalities and a couple of new ones. It had to be delivered with a strict deadline, as the legacy portal would be terminated due to an expiring contract with the related vendor. Using an Agile SCRUM working method combined with the flexibility and speed of the Mendix platform, this deadline was easily met and resulted in a responsive financial portal that provides consumers with real-time insights into and control over their mortgage, annual results, and corresponding rates.
After the delivery of the MVP, continuation of the solution followed in the form of a DevOps construction that is still ongoing to this date. By making use of Mendix' modular development setup, a generic structure for all Quion's processes (e.g., interest rate management, construction deposits, additional mortgage payments) has been designed. This generic structure allows for the implementation of new processes at an incredible speed, as only the process specific workflow must be developed from scratch. All generic functionalities, such as queueing and monitoring, are immediately available.
Currently, the portal has over twenty integrations that support the application. These include an external Virus Scanner, Document Management System (DMS), iDEAL, iDIN and Text Messaging. Mendix' ability to easily integrate with these external sources gave an additional confidence boost to the organization and their business analysts, knowing that the technology created opportunities other technologies would not.
The last major aspect of Mendix portal solution is its custom-built message box. Besides the self-service aspect of the application, providing information about the consumer’s mortgage is a key factor as well. Whenever changes are made to the mortgage or if relevant deadlines approach, it is Quion’s responsibility to notify the consumer. The application offers the functionality to create messages with or without documents to highlight new important information. This provides a complete picture and a central place for all relevant mortgage related information and activities to the consumer.
Results: The main business value of the application is focussed on the gained efficiency. Quion handles a massive number of processes for their clients (i.e., lenders). Due to the scale, every little bit of efficiency gain goes a long way. The portal dramatically reduces the number of e-mails and phone calls Quion receives. The portal enables self-service for the consumer, which made manual activities within Quion redundant. Furthermore, the Mendix portal is integrated in the IT-landscape of Quion through a multitude of webservices. This setup ensures so-called STP (Straight Through Processes) for most of the operations. This again automated several manual steps within the organisation, which resulted in cost reduction, error reduction, and a faster response time to the consumer.
The first version of the application was built by two scrum teams and went live within 8 months. As mentioned, this version included overviews into the status of the customer’s mortgage and the first major workflows. This already surpassed the existing application that was present at Quion. This way of working has enabled the teams to quickly respond to the everchanging demands of the customers and Mendix has provided the developers with the perfect tool to create added value rapidly. The portal teams also acted as pioneers and examples in the agile movement within Quion. The quick success that the development teams achieved, strengthened the believe that more teams needed to make the switch as well. As of today, Quion adopted the agile way of working on a large scale.
Since going live, the portal has supported approximately 250,000 customers from 15 different clients in their mortgage activities. This number is expected to rise even more when new clients make the choice for Quion and new services become available in the "MijnLeningInzicht" portal. Every client that makes use of the portal can request their own label within the application. This will give them their own look and feel. The Mendix application has been setup in a way, that every label has access to the same functionalities but can apply their own branding to it. This acts as one of the main selling points to potential new clients. To this day, positive user feedback on the portal has grown substantially, which led to a bigger focus on the portal in recent times. The portal is becoming the main channel through which Quion interacts with the consumer and we expect that the delivered value of the Mendix platform will continue to contribute to this for a long time to come.