A time of transition for PCF Bank
Background
Finance houses can spend considerable time and effort in dealing with the administration of new proposals. When PCF BANK (then the Private & Commercial Finance Group) decided to automate some of its new business processes, it opted for expert help and advice from Transition Computing, a specialist consultancy based in Milton Keynes.
As an independent finance house, PCF Bank provided a wide range of high quality financial products to consumers and businesses. Founded in 1994, the group’s shares are quoted on the AIM market, part of the London Stock Exchange. Their Business Finance Division offered lease and hire purchase finance packages. It processed a substantial number of proposals each month, originally using a fax and paper-based system.
An Interesting Proposal
Robert Murray, Managing Director, says: ”We started looking for a software house that could help us develop a web-based proposals system for our Consumer Motor Finance Division. Transition Computing stepped into the breach and worked closely with us to produce an application that would automate various decisions and the agreement workflow.”
He continues: “This enabled us to reduce turnaround times and provided the support we needed for our future growth plans. Transition has continued to enhance the system and it now handles over 30,000 proposals per month.”
In May 2009, the Business Finance division was finding that its Access-based proposals management system was becoming increasingly outdated, and Transition was selected to develop a replacement web-based system.
Transition wrote the origination system and also devised the interface with PCF Bank’s contract management system. The new system, eQuote, went live in June 2009, and has already greatly reduced the time taken to transfer information to the contract management system.
Mr Murray adds: “The benefits of working with Transition include their willingness to acquire a deep understanding of our business; and to create the new system to replicate our manual processes, rather than just tailoring an off-the-shelf system.”
Solution - A Streamlined Procedure
The new eQuote system incorporates a unique authorisation document that enables PCF Bank to underwrite a proposal and send it through the authorisation process. This was previously a very paper-intensive and lengthy procedure, but has now been considerably streamlined.
Robert continues: “eQuote gives us much better management information and has automated our underwriting decisions. We like the autoload function, which transfers data automatically to our contract administration and accounting systems."
He adds: “Ultimately, it enables us to offer a faster, more effective and more user-friendly service to our brokers. It also allows us to boost our business volumes without an incremental increase in personnel. We can therefore do more business with the same number of people. I don’t really know how we survived without it!”
