Project Details
Challenges
When it comes to utilizing technology to improve customer experience and fuel growth, BayCoast Bank is regional bank that is committed to punching above its weight.
“From a technology standpoint, we want to be comparing ourselves to Bank of America and Wells Fargo, not regional banks that are the same size,” said Dan DeCosta, Chief Information Officer at BayCoast Bank.
Solutions
BayCoast’s ambitions are supported by action. With Talend at the center of its data management strategy, BayCoast has launched initiatives that slashed loan application times from days to seconds and deployed API calls that provide realtime data exchange for lighting fast decision-making. Additionally, BayCoast has integrated its core banking system with affiliate organizations, empowering informed customer service and cross-marketing efforts across the BayCoast enterprise.
“Our engagement with Talend has been, and will be a contributing factor to efficiency and future growth across the board,” Dan said.
Driving National Expansion with Niche Loans
Dan leads a small but mighty data team that has fully embraced Talend’s data integration platform. One recent initiative saw an automation initiative for manufactured home loans at Priority Funding, an umbrella organization of BayCoast Bank. The initiative decreased loan application time from several days to mere seconds.
Manufactured home loans hold a distinct, and niche, place in home lending. Described by Dan as a hybrid between a home and auto loan, manufactured loans have separate identifiers and conditions – as an example – while home loans are determined by total square footage, manufactured home loans are qualified by the total width and length of the unit. Manufactured home loans carry a rejection rate of nearly 70%. The nuances, and relatively low approval rate, of manufactured home loans have made the offering unpalatable for many banks, and the niche nature have left it untouched by software developers and 3rd party applications.
To meet its needs, BayCoast created an in-house solution with Talend Cloud API Services. With API connections at critical points in the application process, manual entry has been all but eliminated from the cumbersome loan application process. With automation in place, loan officers don’t need to spend hours on applications that are destined for rejection and can provide quick responses during a stressful time for the applicant.
“There’s always a lot of anxiety surrounding that process,” Dan said. “My making the process faster, it allows that customer to know very quickly if they’re going to be approved or denied.”
In turn, loan processers can spend a majority of their time working on approved loans, rather than manually closing out rejected loans. As Priority Funding expands to 14 states and counting, automation has been critical for growth planning.
“Priority Funding will be able to continue to expand into more states without needing to add more and more office staff,” Dan said. “They are prepared to grow and handle all the work that’s going to come with it.”
Core System Integration with Talend + Salesforce and Passerelle Consulting
As Priority Funding focuses on nationwide expansion, BayCoast has not lost sight of customer service initiatives for regional banking and insurance customers. With four affiliate organizations, BayCoast manages a complex ecosystem of source system, 3rd party applications and business users. Talend integration with Salesforce has been critical for managing data institution-wide.
“We integrate data from all these core systems into Salesforce so we can have consolidated information on customers,” Dan said. “We can pull up a customer, and see what they have for deposits, loans, insurance, and investments – all in one place.”
Passerelle guided BayCoast as it developed API calls to its core banking system, enabling upload of real-time data to Salesforce on a case-by-case basis. The BayCoast team has continued to build on that knowledge, creating APIs to connect to PPP funding during the COVID-19 pandemic and automating marketing campaigns between mortgage lending and home insurance.
BayCoast’s system architecture has reduced redundancy and the time required to pull account holder information, giving account representatives more time on customer service.
“We have been able to automate the tedious work so our account representatives can focus on customers,” Dan said. “As a community institution, first and foremost, we want to provide the best solutions and service that we can to our communities that we serve.”
Ready for the Future
With every new application, BayCoast builds on its technical foundation and acumen. Automation initiatives at Priority Funding and across the BayCoast organization have helped ensure regulatory compliance, today and in the future.
“When people talk about automation routines, they don’t necessarily talk about the consistency and accuracy of the data,” Dan said. “If I gave somebody 100 loans to enter in a system manually, there’s going to be at least one mistake in those 100 loans. If I automate it through Talend, there won’t be a single error.”
BayCoast’s work with APIs has also helped it take charge of its data ecosystem – no longer reliant on constraints of 3rd party applications.
“We can actually utilize our core banking data with any FinTech or third party that we want to do business with,” Dan said.
Passerelle will continue to be a trusted partner and consultant of BayCoast Bank.
“Passerelle is very valuable to BayCoast, providing that higher level of knowledge and engagement with Talend technology,” Dan said.
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