SaaScada’s cloud native core banking platform powers Allica Bank’s business rewards account

SaaScada’s cloud native core banking platform powers Allica Bank’s business rewards account

May 02, 2023

Building their product ecosystem around SaaScada’s core banking engine, Allica Bank built a first-class everyday Business Rewards Account for SMEs.

New-age Core Banking systems are built on cloud and digital technologies. They use open API-based architecture to integrate with internal and external systems seamlessly.

Cloud Core Banking is fast becoming an integral part of every bank’s technology transformation strategy and, consequently, the lynchpin of every supplier’s product roadmap. The cost efficiency, flexibility, scalability, and collaborative capabilities that a cloud infrastructure offers makes it a natural choice over on-premise implementation, except when necessitated by specific business or regulatory requirements.

SaaScada is a cloud-native core banking engine that is industry proven to unlock client value, minimise risks, and create real-time data insights. SaaScada simplifies and speeds the process of establishing new services by redesigning how essential financial services are supplied, allowing for launch in months rather than years in a cost-effective, compliant, and secure manner.

The Customer

Allica Bank received its UK banking licence in September 2019 and has expanded rapidly since then. The multi award winning bank was created specifically to service established SMEs and blend current tools and technology with reimagined relationship banking.

When Allica sought to develop a new business current account for established SMEs, it wanted a cost effective and flexible core banking platform on which it could build its own proprietary products for its customers. By choosing SaaScada’s core banking engine, future products could be launched without the need to purchase additional product modules. When combined with SaaScada’s data capabilities and open APIs, this made SaaScada a compelling choice to future-proof the business.

To deliver the Business Rewards Account, a new cross-functional payments team was formed that utilised skill sets from a global team. This new team was tasked with developing a unique proposition – a current account specifically to meet the needs of established SMEs who have traditionally been underserved by high-street banks.

Project and Solution Overview

The proposal was to launch a business current account aimed at SME clients and use SaaScada as the core banking engine to empower Allica’s internal engineering team. SaaScada abstracts away the complexity of integrating multiple vendors into a central set of account ledgers that can be used to deliver a wide range of current account capabilities.

The project team consisted of two agile teams working side-by-side: The CTO, Technical Architects/Engineers from SaaScada were involved. The initial Allica build team comprised only a dozen colleagues under a Product Owner and Tech Lead. The group now comprises three product development squads plus marketing and customer success colleagues.

SaaScada’s core banking engine delivers a completely flexible product configuration and Command Query Responsibility Segregation architecture (an industry-first in core banking ledger technology). The company’s product API provides access to a full spectrum of financial product-related features that enables the configuration of a wide range of products using templates inside the SaaScada Portal by leveraging the Product API to create bespoke innovations.

The integration framework connects external transactions into SaaScada’s ledger, allowing Allica to offer a broad range of functionality within a single account. Each wallet within an account can be linked to one or more card identifiers or banking addresses. Transaction flow can then be manipulated through a configurable set of routing rules, and transactional fee structures maintained internally within the core banking engine.

Event-driven architecture allows Allica to utilise data to build a transactional representation of customer accounts and use this to drive its own proprietary insights and customer experience/engagement. Allica uses several tools as part of a data processing pipeline to build its view of the core banking transactional data to drive a wide range of features, such as push notifications, customer-facing account metrics, financial accounting, and reporting. The project also built the foundations of a new internal solution to manage customer onboarding, and a single customer view is now being leveraged across all future projects.

Implementation Process

The contract was signed in July 2021, and Allica used SaaScada UX API to build a range of onboarding and account servicing capabilities over the next 6 months, with a soft launch in Q4 2021. This was followed by 6 months of further production testing and feature development.

Allica overlaid its proprietary technology on top of SaaScada’s core banking engine to create the Business Rewards Account, which delivered a purpose-built app, authentication, web portal, new sign-up, and application flows. Two-factor authentication was important for the project due to the higher risk activity customers could execute in the app, such as making payments or withdrawing money.

The SaaScada integration framework was used to quickly develop integrations to ClearBank and GPS for agency banking and card payments, respectively, with SaaScada running balances and acting as the central point of record for accounts, transactions, and product configuration. The SaaScada UX API was integrated with Allica’s internal single-customer view solution, allowing seamless and compliant customer onboarding and account opening. The UX API was also incorporated into Allica’s identity provider, combining the power of SaaScada’s authorisation/access permission framework with authentication services provided by Ping.

Challenges

This project involved significant due diligence in selecting potential two-factor authentication partners, all while building the system itself.

The shared Allica and SaaScada team also faced the challenge that – as an innovative take on a traditional product – features were untested in the market. This led to a shared programme of rapid iterations after go-live, which has remained an ongoing discipline.

Finally, the project was under tight time pressure following Allica’s acquisition of AIB’s GB SME lending portfolio, which created a near-term opportunity for Allica to expand its reach in business current accounts.

Benefits Achieved

The Allica Bank Business Rewards Account delivered functionality usually only available to larger businesses, including a purpose-built app and web experience, extra security through two-factor authentication, cash back on card payments, plus no monthly fees or charges on payments.

This is important for established SMEs, who were used to settling for modified personal banking accounts.

The key highlights of the project were:

Allica Bank’s offering for UK SMEs was transformed beyond a niche lending product to a more comprehensive offering for established SMEs in the UK.
Rapidly added overdrafts and savings pots once the initial current account functionality was complete.

Conclusion

The implementation was made possible by the close collaboration of the SaaScada and Allica Bank teams. The two units worked very closely with weekly joint team meetings to review progress with ad hoc meetings as required. If required, the teams also worked on a combined daily stand-up basis when things were moving really quickly to remain in full alignment and resolve project blockers immediately.

The team was able to overcome significant challenges of scope and time pressures, turning the project around in just 6 months. A resulting solution was deemed so powerful that it was adopted across the business for other products.

At Allica, we believe that a small number of talented and empowered colleagues can deliver more – and better – outcomes than the huge, bureaucratic programmes beloved of traditional banks. The successful build of our proprietary Business Rewards Current Account – counted in months, not years – demonstrates this in practice, helped hugely by the shared values of our partner SaaScada, and their API-first core. Conrad Ford, Chief Product Officer at Allica Bank

Key Facts