The Cheshire Building Society has doubled the number of
mortgage applications it receives online, after rolling out
technology to authenticate brokers and customers making web
applications.
The building society, which has placed internet and telephone
banking and sales at the heart of its strategy to expand out of the
North West into the rest of the UK, claims to be one a handful of
financial institutions to have introduced single authentication
technology for multiple sales channels.
The society said that the proportion of mortgage applications
received online has grown from 5% to 10% since it went live with
the first stage of its online expansion - a secure website for
mortgage brokers - at the end of last year.
Cheshire aims to grow its customer base further by developing
telephone and internet banking and is investigating other potential
channels, such as the use of mobile telephones for checking bank
accounts.
"Online business has gone through the roof in recent weeks,"
said John Graham, internet manager at Cheshire. "We put it down to
the fact that a lot more intermediaries are becoming web
enabled."
Cheshire installed Falcon, a dedicated Unix server, supplied by
Aspace, which authenticates customers and brokers on using the web
or phoning the call centre, at the end of last year. The project
took nine months to compete.
Falcon uses passwords, and "memorable data" stored as SQL files
on Cheshire's SQL Server cluster to verify the identity of web
users or callers. An algorithm detects whether hackers have
attempted to change files, and electronically links adjacent
entries on the database systems logs, to detect attempts to delete
data.
Cheshire is using the Falcon system to authenticate customers
and brokers making mortgage applications online, and intends to
extend it to authenticate the identities of people phoning its call
centre - a move that will allow customers to check their balance
and move funds over the phone.
The society developed a web interface for brokers, which went
live at the end of last year, to provide details of its mortgages,
and to offer quotes and decisions in principle on mortgage offers
within 10 minutes. It plans to expand the site to offer quotes for
non-standard mortgages.