bcpbank is a fast-growing, innovative state-of-the-art bank with $200 million in assets. The bank currently has eight branches in New Jersey and Massachusetts, six in Ontario, Canada, with plans for 21 additional branches set to open in the next year. bcpbank provides savings and loan products that reflect competitive rates and flexible terms, all at convenient locations.
Since it began operations in North America in 1980, the company has continued to develop solid banking services for its expanding customer base – currently over 25,000 in the US and 30,000 in Canada. Its parent company, BCP Group (Banco Comercial Português), is a strong international financial group with a presence throughout Europe, North America, Africa and Asia.
Growing operation requires flexibility
All branches of bcpbank use IBM AS/400 host systems, running Fiserv® banking applications. To simplify and make internal processes faster, the bank decided to develop a Web-enabled interface for accessing the AS/400. Also, they wanted to move away from using thick clients on the desktop. Screen scraping was not the ideal solution. “We wanted the freedom to customize the interface, while keeping our host system unchanged,” explained Miguel Carvalho, Chief Administrative Officer for bcpbank. bcpbank selected Attachmate mainframe integration solutions.
“The ability of bundling, scripting, validation, and rolling back transactions was what we were looking for,” said Carvalho. The advantage is that no changes to the host code are required; Attachmate mainframe integration solutions offer a non-invasive approach to programmatically integrating legacy mainframe information and business logic with new and custom e-business applications.
Session parking was essential
The AS/400 applications are used by tellers to manage activity with bank customer accounts, including deposit history, checks written, current loan status, and also return check imaging.
According to Miguel Carvalho, one of the highest priorities for the staff was the ability to park a session on screens that are frequently accessed. Session parking makes it easier to get to multiple account screens. Navigation is much smoother than with the previous system. For example, when doing balance transfers, users are able to get to the screens fast to perform other necessary tasks. Attachmate mainframe integration solutions enable users to go back to the beginning or directly to a new screen. As soon as the user has completed the request it goes back to the initial screen that was accessed.
Minimized navigation and no training necessary
Once new applications were deployed, bcpbank employees were pleased. “Our users like the new system because it requires no navigation and no extra training,” said Carvalho. “They were accustomed to the old system we had, and this new one is very similar – but we’ve reduced the time it takes for our staff to navigate, so it is definitely an improvement.” Transactions are now in real-time, so the database is up-to-date. “We are already benefiting from this new interface,” said Carvalho.” We have lowered our costs on training, lowered our time to develop new applications, and the re-usage of interfaces is paying back our investment quite fast.”
“The partnership with Attachmate has been tremendous and we have had all the support we need,” added Carvalho. “Fortunately, it’s not too much, which is also a good sign that these are good products. All the information we receive from Attachmate is very helpful in designing applications, giving us new ideas for projects and new ventures to develop for the bank.”