Hampshire Trust Bank (HTB) is a digitally-focussed specialist bank staffed by experts that enable UK businesses to realise their ambitions.
Primary operations include development finance, specialist mortgages and specialist business finance (including wholesale, block-discounting, structured asset finance and classic cars).
HTB also provides award-winning savings accounts to individuals and businesses. With an ambitious growth target in mind, the bank targeted digital as key to its expansion.
A fresh approach to change
HTB was frustrated with relying on external resources for technical developments on tasks that they didn’t deem to be particularly challenging. Results were slower than expected, often failed to match business requirements, and the associated price tags were unreasonable. The team knew the job could be done better in house and began searching for a way to utilise the knowledge within the business without hiring an additional army of developers. Low-code clearly stood out as the solution.
That’s where Netcall’s Liberty Create came in. Create is a new breed of low-code software solution, built for both business users and professional developers. By using its drag-and-drop interface to configure, rather than code, it allows users to build a new app fast. And once the app exists, it can be tested, refined and improved on an ongoing basis.
The low-code platform has enabled HTB to form a small team that can now build the systems the bank needs and manage process improvements easily.
Modernising the front office to improve customer experiences
David Patterson, Head of Solutions & Delivery at HTB, explains,
“Our journey with low-code development started because we needed to modernise the front-office application suite, across the business and across all of our products. We invested in Liberty Create initially for our specialist mortgage division, to replace manual processes, improve workflow to drive cost efficiencies, and increase consistency in process execution across the team,”
The initial mortgage division project was successful and Liberty Create is now driving cost efficiencies and business improvements throughout the organisation. The platforms that have been built by using low-code have become core assets, assisting with vital areas such as linking the bank’s API infrastructure to data services, fraud prevention, credit risk, and Companies House data.
The use of Liberty Create has enabled HTB to focus on the time it takes to serve customers (and serve them well) and as a result, it has positioned the bank for exceptional growth.
HTB’s latest platform a property development finance system, has replaced a host of manual and spreadsheet-based processes that handle client customer and credit-rating data. Low-code lends itself to an agile improvement approach, so the system can be continually enhanced and added to.
Russ Fitzgerald, CIO at HTB, adds,
“This project has come in at less than one-third of the anticipated cost. Plus, it will be delivered four months earlier than planned. ”
“These very short timeframes are enabling us to move towards weekly deliveries of capability enhancement, and with confidence in the quality of delivery,”
Delivering – and delivering faster
The delivery model of Liberty Create matches HTB’s agile project approach. Without getting bogged down in the process, the development team utilises the elements of agile that work best in digital transformation in banking, especially for a small bank. Liberty Create lends itself perfectly to that capability.
During its low-code journey, HTB invested heavily in testing capabilities, providing value with an improved turnaround time for any defects. Previously, developers would publish a change, finishing in the evening, then the test team would arrive the next morning and start the test pack, which could run for 3-4 hours, ensuring everything worked correctly and highlighting any regressions. The developers wouldn’t get feedback until lunchtime, therefore losing half a day of development time.
Now, the developers publish an update and leave for the evening. Liberty Create takes 30 minutes to package the release and push it to the test environment, waking up the testing platform automatically once complete and running the series of tests. By 9 am, the test team starts the day with the results and the developers work on any fixes needed immediately. As a result, an extra half a day per developer is gained from every push. This acted as the first step for HTB on its journey to seamless integrated testing and DevOps.
Changing the relationship with off-the-shelf for good
Today, HTB’s confidence in front-end building capabilities now influences how the bank approaches new potential suppliers with a clear strategy that needs to work with low-code. By tailoring its own front-end capabilities and utilising API services, the bank can pick the best out of the industry suppliers and create USPs for its customers.
Low-code has also changed HTB’s attitude towards buying tech – with no more front-to-back services that are not delivering value, or slow releases and outdated legacy systems. The bank commoditises its back-end systems suppliers based on the ‘best-in-breed approach’ to build or buy. It has become the cornerstone of HBT’s technology strategy, increasing innovation, flexibility, and creativity.
Growing with a trusted vendor
With the introduction of low-code, HTB has moved from being a user of a legacy core banking platform into building out its own capabilities. It has honed its ability to develop systems efficiently, change direction when needed, and react to an industry position or an operational challenge quickly.
David Patterson, Head of Solutions & Delivery at HTB, added,
“Initially, we worked alongside the Netcall team, which started our delivery and then worked extremely well with us to hand over to our small but very talented internal team. We’ve had very strong engagement with Netcall, from the CTO all the way down – we value this support and attention greatly.
For us, it is amongst the highest criteria we look for in a supplier – and there are only a handful of suppliers where we genuinely feel we get that top level of support, plus the ability to feedback, request and input on product road mapping,”
Mike Beveridge, Business Analyst at HTB, commented,
“The HTB Development Team is now building a portfolio for the year ahead. Like any innovative business, the team has more ideas than resources. Reflecting their confidence in using low-code as a front-end tool, the team is considering using it for internet-facing services and a number of digital services to improve internal workflow and processes.”
“This will become the blueprint for how we do it going forward,”
Faizal Danga, Project Manager at HTB, adds,
“We’re looking forward to growing our technology capabilities using Netcall’s low-code, adding to our current technology estate and allowing the bank to move towards the next generation of banking technology,”
The team aims to utilise the workflow insights provided by Liberty Create in a wider element across the bank to improve back-office efficiency, data governance, data quality, and control, while also improving the operational efficiency of the bank.
For additional information on Liberty Create Click Here
Netcall is a leading provider of low-code and customer engagement solutions. A UK company quoted on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange. By enabling customer-facing and IT talent to collaborate, Netcall takes the pain out of big change projects, helping businesses dramatically improve the customer experience, while lowering costs.
Over 600 organisations in financial services, insurance, local government and healthcare use the Netcall Liberty platform to make life easier for the people they serve.
For additional information on Netcall visit their Website or view their Company Profile
