Omnichannel banking lets clients perform and execute the same banking operations through various channels, e.g. a website, a mobile application, even letting them start an operation on one channel and finish it on an other by performing real-time data synchronisation. Providing a true omnichannel solution and complying with the PSD2-mandated Open API and SCA requirements meant a challenge for Hungarian Bank so Advocate consultants were asked to help.

Challenges of Omnichannel Banking

In order to provide true omnichannel approach for all customer segments (from retail individual to large corporates) a new Authentication and Authorisation Management System (AAMS) was designed by senior Advocate IT Business Analysts. The bank was using a legacy online banking system which was responsible for providing the Internet Bank front end and a data management module which was used for managing customer data and hardware tokens by a dedicated e-Channels back office team.

For enabling the bank to increase the number of the customers and introduce new, PSD2-compliant signatory devices in accordance with the bank’s e-Channel strategy, the implemented solution was designed to be able to take care of the following use cases:

• Detach the hardware token handling from the legacy system in order to be able to introduce new kinds of signatory devices.
• Provide access for branch officers and back office associates of Corporate Banking Division, Call Centre operators and realise a rule-based workflow for customer on-boarding, account changes, signatory device freezing / reactivation processes.
• Integrate with the currently available Internet Bank to perform limit utilisation calculations, govern account accesses and signature rights (primary signature, secondary signature, sole signatory and non signatory rights).
• Integrate with the Bank’s ESB service layer for gathering customer personal data and list of available accounts for providing data for customer on-boarding process.
• Serve banking operation (incl. login and password change) requests initiated through the newly introduced Mobile Banking application and via the Payment Services Directive 2 mandated Open API.
• Provide accessible information visualisation tools, reports and customer activity log for Call Centre and Customer Service operators and System Administrators.

Streamlining business processes for omnichannel access contracts

With the help of the new centralised customer access management system, our client was able to streamline the formerly document-based customer on-boarding processes for e-Channel access.

By providing a rule-based workflow, the manual task of entering data by the e-Channels back office team was eliminated by letting the branch officers / call centre operators and corporate bankers initiate the on-boarding or contract modification process and by requiring only an approval for certain changes from the back office personnel.

By integrating the AAMS with the Internet Bank, an online contracting wizard was designed and developed in order to provide a self-service online contracting method for certain customers to claim and activate the new PSD2-compliant signatory device. The self-service wizard is served by the AAMS with the possibility of finishing the claim / activation process in the branch as well.

With the help of the new AAMS, approximately 3000 work-hours were spared in the branches in the first three months thanks to the self-service online contracting and the e-Channel Back Office team’s workload was halved because of the provided new rule-based workflow.

How it was achieved - from requirements analysis to roll-out

The complex task of the introduction of a centralised authentication and authorisation management system was done by the help of our consultants who were responsible for the whole requirements analysis, system specification, testing and roll-out (including branch trainings) tasks.

Advocate consultants performed the task of analysing the current branch and back office-related processes, optimise the future workflow. After several interviews to the main stakeholders, understanding the requirements, the concept of the new Authentication and Authorisation Management System was conceived, allowing the bank to streamline and renew its processes regarding e-Channel customer on-boarding.

Working in an Agile project framework, a detailed software requirements specification was written in an iterative manner and was handed out to the outsourced development company who were responsible for the implementation. The specification contained the following:

• detailed specification of the to-be implemented workflows, processes
• UI wireframes for all screens and processes
• authentication/authorisation rules
• service operation mapping for accessing and using the Bank’s ESB service layer
• data and process models

With a carefully planned project plan, a multi-phased introduction was planned by providing usable software versions from the first time, the project team was able to deliver solutions a few months after the project kick-off.