The Cheshire Building Society has significantly increased its
business reach with the implementation of new Internet services.
Since the launch of online mortgage and insurance services early
last month the mutual building society has found that half those
using the service are based in south-east England. These potential
customers would have been beyond the reach of the
Macclesfield-based company's branch network.
"This service has been a major investment for a company of our
size," said Ken Pilkington, Cheshire e-commerce manager. "But
considering the extended reach, it is cheaper than opening more
branches in the South East."
The online services allow potential customers to receive mortgage
quotes, get a mortgage decision in principle while online, and
complete a mortgage application over the Web.
Unlike most financial e-commerce packages, the Cheshire service
lets customers save the data they have already keyed in, exit the
application and return later to complete it, said Pilkington.
The e-business application was built to specification for the
mutual by IMR Global to run on Microsoft Windows 2000 Enterprise
Edition operating system. It uses a cluster of 20 Compaq Proliant
servers, including six Web servers and two database servers running
Microsoft's SQL 7 database software using a Compaq RA 8000 storage
area network.
To ensure availability the building society employed Windows 2000
load-balancing software, and two ISP connections.
Pilkington believes the success of the project lies in its being
driven from the top. "The essential driver in this project was full
support from the board, and the chief executive who is fortunately
fully au fait with the benefits of modern Internet technologies,"
he said.
The project team was led by the marketing department and included
members from the sales and IT departments to ensure the application
met customers' needs.
The Cheshire now plans to move its core banking application,
currently running on an ICL mainframe, to Windows 2000 which will
give all of its customers a real time view of their investments and
borrowing using iwealthview software from Fincentric.
Lindsay Clark
lindsay.clark@rbi.co.uk