31 March 2009 News

 

Banks say IT key to mortgage market

Research carried out for Capgemini, Unicredit and Efma for the 2009 World Retail banking report shows that banks see IT optimisation as the third most important (45%) opportunity in addressing the mortgage market over the next five years, with 36% saying that using remote channels is.

More than one-third of banks surveyed considered the optimisation of their IT on a geographic basis as critical with a rise from 6% to 31% of banks strongly considering developing international IT systems in the next five years. Other levers for IT optimisation are synergies with other factors (26%), IT outsourcing (23%) and IT offshoring (16%)

Origination and service optimisation

Of the banks surveyed 61% considered the acceleration of the origination process as a major challenge that had to be met. The capacity to make a loan quickly (e.g. two days) was seen as a key success factor for sales. Accordingly, many banks have either already changed or aim to change tools in their front office (and often in their middle and back offices) to gain efficiency and speed.

Geographic consolidation was the most cited lever in which to optimise origination and servicing over the next five years. Almost one out of every ten banks aims to develop multi-country middle and back offices over the next five years. Nineteen per cent of banks see offshoring as a key area for them to take action while 18% see outsourcing as key to optimize origination and servicing.

Using remote channels

Using remote channels (such as the Internet and call centres) was the sixth opportunity overall, mentioned by 36% of the banks surveyed. This opportunity has grown the most, with only 13% of banks surveyed saying they had considered it important for the past five years. Nearly 40% of those surveyed said they intend to develop remote channels as complementary sales channels to branches. In this case, the declared ambition is to sell 5%-10% of products through the Internet or call centres. This will be linked to the introduction of simplified offers.