TBC Bank in Uzbekistan is a digital bank and the subsidiary of TBC Banking Group in Georgia. The vigorous activity of TBC Bank is a catalyst for changes in the banking sector in Uzbekistan by contributing to the development of the financial services sector and the country’s economy as a whole. The bank offers deposits and loans all through its app via Android and iOS. Opening a card and deposit, payments and money transfers, and/or getting a loan is done through the bank’s app.

For its implementation in Uzbekistan, TBC approached Capital Banking Solutions (CBS) who was capable of providing an open platform that delivers seamless integration standards and fast and efficient Loans and Deposits products’ setup and management. The choice was made on Capital Banking Solutions’ Open Banking Suite to seamlessly connect to TBC Enterprise Service Bus through API Integration services while answering the bank’s detailed business needs.

Implementation Process

The idea was to deploy a core banking solution that will work as a back-end product management solution through a web services-based module, connecting it to the other bricks of the Enterprise Service Bus. Two modules of CBS suite were proposed: CapitalBanker as the Core Banking back-end, and CapitalConnect as the web services module, based on WSO2 open standards. Since that, in the solution requested by Space Bank, CapitalBanker did not have to execute the accounting of operations, which was treated in another module, standard web services had to be optimized, or even created, to adapt the inflow/outflow of information needed to segregate the recording of files and their accounting. This was a premiere for CBS, where, until that project, accounting was always done by the core banking system.

Another challenge was to adapt to a 24/7 full online mode of operations for loans/deposits. The end of the day has to be readapted to have the least offline time possible. To achieve the deadline, a shorter internal workflow was designed between development, quality assurance, consulting, and support services, working all in a tighter configuration to handle the main project and the side requests submitted by Space Bank. This new workflow was successful, project achieving deadlines despite the many challenges imposed by Space Bank’s particular scenario and adaptation to new technologies for involved consultants and support personnel. Space is the first fully digital bank in Georgia, powered by TBC and launched in 2018.

The Exposure of the Banking functionalities of TBC’s core system was done through web services of type REST API. The implementation of web Services was done in Capital Connect, CBS Middleware, built on the top of WSO2. Capital Connect is a J2EE Enterprise Application Integration platform based on SOA standards. CapitalConnect includes different domains such as

• Identity Manager: it assures the security authentication
• Data services: it provides aggregated views of either structured or unstructured data
• Connectivity services: it provides a wide range of connectors
• Mobile as a Back-end service: it provides all services needed for mobile banking purposes.

In Addition, it includes Micro Services developed in spring boot technology supporting a modular approach & connected to the Core Database for either data fetching, storage, or data processing.

The solution was implemented in TBC’s Digital and Retail banking division. The project went on for a year with a test run and the Go Live was in June 2020. The Public Go Live was on October 10^th, 2020. The project team consisted of 1 project Director, 1 project manager, 2 business consultants, 2 developers, 2 technical consultants, and 1 quality officer.

Since this was a relatively short project in terms of timeline, but with high technical requirements, standard CBS project methodology was not adopted, so a more flexible project methodology was designed, with the designation of a project manager with operational capacity, under the supervision of a project director. The project manager dealt with usual project management tasks (budget and timeline, follow-up meetings, resource reservation) but also intervened on testing and deployment, due to his extensive business knowledge. The project director monitored the project’s quality assurance between all internal CBS stakeholders. Client designated product managers, able to execute testing, take immediate decisions concerning setup choices, or budget approval for new requests. Those product managers were supervised by a project director. Technical resources were also involved during the whole project lifecycle, due to the high technicity of the project. This kind of choice, for CBS and the client, proved extremely quick in the reactivity of the stakeholders, while maintaining a high degree for quality assurance mainly due to the project director’s close follow-up.

Benefits Achieved

This project was of low implementation cost / high value for customers, and high ROI with a focus on

• Deployment of selected core banking module (phased approach),
• Use of standardized API framework,
• Ease of applications interconnection through the ESB,
• All leading to provide the end customers with a 24/7,
• Omnichannel way of opening loans and making deposits with their bank.

It has never been easier for customers to request and get a loan instantly, at any time, through digital means (as readily available as their smartphones). The complexity behind this ease of use was also greatly reduced by the selected technologies, based on the WSO2 framework. The carefully written and optimized APIs enabled the smooth circulation of information across the different applications plugged in the ESB, allowing for instant treatment by every brick.

Conclusion

The combination of best-of-breed applications, in each banking business sector, all linked by efficient APIs, presented the most efficient, while low cost, an approach found today on the market. CBS selected for both its ability to have strong, efficient back-end applications, and to present them through standardized web services, so ease of integration, and high ROI.

Key Facts

Bank: TBC Bank
Headquarters: Uzbekistan
Supplier: Capital Banking Solutions
Solution: CapitalBanker and CapitalConnect suite