Customer Solution Case Study

Premier Nationalized Bank Automates Loan and Deposit Application Process

OverviewCountry or Region: IndiaIndustry: Banking

Customer ProfileBank of India is one of the country’s leading nationalized banks. It has 4,100+ branches and 50 zonal offices in India spread across States and Union Territories.

Business SituationBank of India wanted to enhance customer service by enabling its account opening and loan application processes on the internet.

SolutionBank of India chose Microsoft SharePoint to internet enable 15 forms in an aggressive time-frame and with utilization of minimal resources.

Benefits Eases loan application process

for customers Increases efficiency and

reduces turnaround time by 50%

Helps serve all generation of customers irrespective of the location they reside in

Digitization of all documents associated with a loan process

“The automation of 15 application forms has helped us improve customer satisfaction, reduce turnaround time by 50%, increase efficiency and reach out to customers irrespective of the location they reside in.”

Pushpinder Singh, General Manager, Bank of India

Bank of India (BoI) is amongst one of the premier

nationalized banks in the country. It has 4,100+

branches in India spread across States and Union

Territories. These branches are in turn controlled by 50

zonal offices. The bank also has a sizable presence

outside of India with a network of 29 branches (including

five representative offices) at key banking and financial

centers including London, New York, Paris, Tokyo, Hong-

Kong and Singapore.

With a goal to improve customer service, efficiency and

reduce turnaround time for loan disbursal, the bank

chose to automate its account opening and loan

application processes. Bank of India chose Microsoft

SharePoint to automate 15 forms and make them

available online in a short span of time with utilization of

minimal resources.

SituationBanks usually have a plethora of physical forms that customers have to fill to avail of various services such as loans or for opening bank accounts. This is time consuming for customers as well as for bank employees involved in processing these requests.

To enhance customer service by reducing turnaround time, Bank of India wanted to enable its account opening and loan application processes on the internet. By providing this facility, the bank wanted to cater to all generation of customers irrespective of the location they reside in.

As a step towards digitization of the application process, the bank wanted to provide its customers the facility to upload supporting documents on the portal while submitting the forms online.

Automation of MIS reporting and setting up a collaborative portal for information sharing within the organization were also high on priority for Bank of India.

SolutionAs Bank of India embarked on this journey to internet enable these forms and automate processes, the bank found Microsoft InfoPath forms, backed with ease of consolidating these on SharePoint and associating workflows, would help accelerate the entire process. The bank has been using

SharePoint for various needs such as intranet, discussion forums, document management system, and alumni portal for many years now and hence the team had skillsets on SharePoint.

“We decided to choose Microsoft SharePoint as we already had the skillsets to manage it. Besides, the ease of use, out-of-the-box functionalities and faster time to market tilted the balance in favor of SharePoint,” says Mr Ashutosh Mishra, Assistant General Manager, Bank of India.

The bank also has a portal, called StarDesk, which is a collaborative knowledge and information sharing platform. It has been integrated with the bank’s collateral and loan application system.

One of the challenges for the bank was the aggressive time-frame of 15 days during which it had to automate 15 loan related forms. However, with support from Microsoft, Bank of India was able to meet the deadline despite having a relatively small team (of 2 people) from the bank’s IT team involved in the development process of these forms.

The forms that the bank has automated include:

Account Opening Form: http://ola.bankofindia.com/Pages/AOFLanding.aspx

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“We decided to leverage Microsoft SharePoint as we already had the resources and skillsets to manage it. Besides, SharePoint offered out-of-the-box modules for forms, with minimal coding and easy change management. Ease of development drastically reduced the time to market.”

Ashutosh Mishra,Assistant General Manager,Bank of India

Retail Loans

Star AutoFin: http://ola.bankofindia.com/loans/Pages/StarautoFin.aspx

Star Personal Loan: http://ola.bankofindia.com/loans/Pages/PersonalLoan.aspx

Star Home Loan: http://ola.bankofindia.com/loans/Pages/Homeloan.aspx

Future Lease Rental: http://ola.bankofindia.com/loans/Pages/FutureLoan.aspx

Star Education Loan: http://www.bankofindia.co.in/english/EduLoanForm1.aspx?from=new

Star Mitra Loan: http://ola.bankofindia.com/loans/Pages/MitraLoan.aspx

Corporate Loans:-

Loan for Corporate: http://ola.bankofindia.com/loans/Pages/Corporates.aspx

Loan for Traders: http://ola.bankofindia.com/loans/Pages/TradersLoan.aspx

Rural Loans:-

Agricultural Loan: http://ola.bankofindia.com/loans/Pages/AgriLoan.aspx

KCC Loan: http://ola.bankofindia.com/loans/Pages/Kcc.aspx

Dairy Farming Loan: http://ola.bankofindia.com/loans/Pages/Dairyforming.aspx

Farm Mechanization: http://ola.bankofindia.com/loans/Pages/FarmMechanisation.aspx

MSE Loan:-

MSE Loan: http://ola.bankofindia.com/loans/Pages/MSELanding.aspx

These standardized forms were based on Reserve Bank of India (RBI) guidelines to all banks.

Once a form is filled, a workflow engine is integrated to process it with related departments for approvals, though the actual transaction closure happens with the help of BizTalk integration between backend systems and SharePoint.

The bank inaugurated the automated form facility on its 107th

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The automation of account processing has helped reduce turnaround time for the bank’s customers.

“Based on the information that an applicant submits through the online process, we can find out if the customer is eligible for a loan or not.”

Varsha Patkey,Manager, Bank of India

Foundation Day on September 7, 2012.

BenefitsBank of India has been successful in enhancing customer satisfaction by easing the loan application process and reducing the turnaround time. The bank is now able to serve all generation of customers irrespective of the location they reside in.

Automation of Account Processing and Loan Application

The automation has helped reduce turnaround time for the bank’s customers while improving its efficiency in disbursing the loans.

“In the manual process, you may end up making a couple of visits to the bank to complete the forms and documentation, which can possibly take 3-4 days. However, with the automated system, the entire process from filling up the form to loan disbursal takes about a week, reducing the turnaround time by 50%,” says Mr Dilip Gaikwad, Deputy General Manager, Bank of India.

The automation process has proved to be a boon for the bank’s NRI customers, who can now avail of the services from any part of the world. There has been a 50% decrease in the time to process applications from NRI customers

since the online form facility was launched.

Within a week of launching the online form facility, as many as 250 applications were received. This has opened a new avenue for the bank to increase its customer base by reaching out to people who do not have the time to visit the bank to submit their loan applications.

“With the online loan application process in place, we are able to cater to all generation of customers,” he adds.

Digitization of Processes

The solution also provides the facility to upload supporting documents on the portal while submitting the forms online. The bank gets the documents verified during the process of loan disbursal.

According to Ms Varsha Patkey, Manager, Bank of India, “Based on the information that an applicant submits through the online process, we can find out if the customer is eligible for a loan or not. Even if the customer does not fill up the complete details, we can still contact them for more information. This has not only improved the accuracy of the information obtained but has also helped us in knowing our customers better and in turn gave us a new channel of communication. Customers can now track their own application status.”

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“In the manual process, you may end up making a couple of visits to the bank to complete the forms and documentation, which can possibly take 3-4 days. However, with the automated system, the entire process from filling up the form to loan disbursal takes about a week, reducing the turnaround time by 50%,”

Dilip Gaikwad,Deputy General Manager,Bank of India

“Thanks to SharePoint, we have now digitized all our Board meeting proceedings. SharePoint is also used as our document management platform, which gives us more time to focus on our core business processes and avoid repetitive tasks,” says Ms Patkey.

Automation of MIS Reporting

Bank of India is utilizing SharePoint for automation of MIS reports that are submitted to its branch offices.

Collaborative Portal

With the help of SharePoint, Bank of India set up a portal called StarDesk, which has enabled a collaborative environment for knowledge and information sharing. Prior to this, it was a challenge to track important communications within the organization. Bank of India can now keep all its employees on the same page with respect to important developments within the bank.

The Way Forward

Bank of India plans to further harness the power of SharePoint. “We are one of the early adopters of SharePoint across all workloads. However, we need to market the online automation process and also add new modules to further improve our processes. We hope to automate more processes and provide better services to our

customers in the next two years,” adds Mr Gaikwad.

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Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 is the business collaboration platform for the enterprise and the Web.

For more information about Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, go to:www.microsoft.com/sharepoint

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For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:www.microsoft.com

For more information about Bank of India products and services, visit the website at: www.bankofindia.co.in

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published October 2012

Software and Services Microsoft Server Product

Portfolio− Microsoft SharePoint Server

2010