Portuguese challenger bank, Banco CTT, needed to improve the experience of customers applying for mortgages. Delighting its network of 500 mortgage loan business partners was a top priority if it was to win market share. In six months with OutSystems and the support of OutSystems partner askblue, Banco CTT launched a first-of-its-kind mortgage origination portal, that provides partners and their customers a frictionless mortgage application experience.
The results—just seven months after go-live—suggest Banco CTT is off to a flying start, with increased lending, significant efficiency savings, and newfound loyalty from happy partners.
“We wanted to give our partners much more autonomy. By giving them the ability to track the progress of their applications with automated status alerts, they’d be able to provide their customers with a much better service.”
Created by Portugal’s long-established postal service, Banco CTT is a challenger bank that aims to deliver convenience, transparency, and value for money to thousands of retail banking customers. Simplicity and customer-centric innovation are at the heart of the bank’s growth strategy.
Although newly established, Banco CTT has risen rapidly to join the ranks of Portugal’s major banks. On its first day of trading in early 2016, the bank opened 52 branches simultaneously, and today it has around 210 branches. Now established as a trusted provider of banking services for over 400,000 citizens, Banco CTT set its sights on the mortgage lending market.
“We’ve achieved our goal of being the first to market. And using the OutSystems application development platform, we’ve been able to give our partners an improved and integrated experience that is helping us grow.”
The bank’s mortgage origination process relied on human-powered workflow. Almost every hand-off throughout the process involved manual procedures.
“Whether applications came directly to us from a branch or a partner, an important part of our daily work was handled manually, which slowed down the process and adversely affected the customer experience,” explains Pedro Bastos Marques, Regulatory Controller at Banco CTT.
Although these practices were typical across the industry, as a new market entrant Banco CTT had the opportunity to streamline the end-to-end mortgage approval process. By simplifying its processes and focusing on the needs of its customers and partners, the bank knew it could gain a competitive advantage.
“We wanted to give our partners much more autonomy,” says Pedro. “By giving them the ability to track the progress of their applications with automated status alerts, they’d be able to provide their customers with a much better service.”
Banco CTT realized that none of its Portuguese competitors had such a solution. “Getting a solution like this to market before a competitor would give us a significant advantage and help us engage more deeply with our partner network,” says Pedro.
Deliver web applications and portals
Powerful integration
Proven partner communityBanco CTT set out to create a portal to provide a seamless mortgage origination process to its partner network.
The bank’s initial vision included the following capabilities:
Banco CTT had already used OutSystems to create invoice and purchase approval workflows. This gave the bank a high degree of confidence that the application development could solve their origination challenges, not least because they had already integrated with several of the back-office systems that the new solution would require.
With support from askblue, a Portuguese award-winning OutSystems implementation partner, the solution took six months to deliver—including five months of development, and one month for testing.
The project team included four full-time developers, a part-time UX designer, and an architecture specialist who advised at the outset of the design.
The initial solution had two modules:
The portal integrates with ten different business systems and includes a new campaigns module that allows Banco CTT to manage incentive programs for its partner network.
askblue is a consulting company created in 2013 that provides specialized consultancy services in the Financial Market and IT. Our strengths and competitive advantages results from an ever increasing...
Learn more about AskblueIn just seven months, the Banco CTT team has already seen multiple improvements and savings:
Taken as a whole, Banco CTT has seen a four-fold productivity increase and a corresponding acceleration of the end-to-end origination process.
Partners now have full visibility of the progress of their customers’ mortgage applications, from the moment they are submitted, right through to approval. Proactive alerts help them respond quickly to requirements, such as missing paperwork, proof of earnings, valuations, and much more.
“We’ve achieved our goal of being the first to market,” says Luís Brites Santos, Mortgage Loans Business Director at Banco CTT. “And using the OutSystems platform, we’ve significantly improved our efficiency and the customer experience for partners and applicants alike.”
Banco CTT expects the portal to play a critical role as they grow. The bank has around 600 partners, with 2,500 users already on the platform. There are at least another 500 licensed financial advisor firms in Portugal that could potentially join the Banco CTT business partner network. Banco CTT’s mortgage operation can now scale much more cost-effectively, thanks to the improved efficiency provided by the portal.
“The platform is helping us align with market demand, attract new business partners and customers, and reduce our operational costs—all at the same time.”
The portal continues to evolve. For example, partners can already see statements of their deals and commission entitlement. Soon they’ll be able to upload fee invoices and track their progress to payment. Partners will soon have a mobile app to help them keep track of all mortgage applications, which will be especially valuable for financial advisors that are often on-the-road.
Moreover, thanks to the high speed, low-code approach, Banco CTT has the agility needed to adapt their mortgage origination process whatever the market throws at them. As Luís says, “Time to market will always be important to us. Whether we’re responding to regulatory change, demands of our partners or ideas of our own, low-code and continuous deployment provide us a continuing agility advantage.”
