Achmea raises its report grade to a 9

The customer: Achmea

Achmea Hypotheekbank (with its head office in 's-Hertogenbosch, NL) provides the ICT operations, including the production of letters and documents, for all Achmea mortgage brands, such as Centraal Beheer, Woonfonds Hypotheken and Avéro Achmea. Letters and documents are vital to any mortgage company and these can be very complex. Offers, for example, can vary from just a few pages to more than eighty and are based on complicated business rules and text components. Also, a significant amount of batch production, is required to produce such essential documents as monthly accounts, interest rate reset proposals and the annual tax returns. Documents utilise data from front, middle, and back office systems.

More than 140 of the 350 employees use browser-based ITP/OnLine which means that distributing the documents throughout four different office locations is no longer a problem.

Achmea had the problem

Dirk Smit, information analyst and functional administrator with Achmea Hypotheekbank, explains the reason for change: "We had been using an earlier version of ITP for some years but over time, Achmea and third parties had built a whole maze of applications round it. While it met the functional requirements it was becoming increasingly unclear quite who was responsible for the maintenance. In addition, agreements on SLAs were either outdated or non-existent. Consequently, the document system had become extremely vulnerable, susceptible to errors and unresponsive to change."

The costs of maintenance and modifications mounted because there was little or no knowledge of the customised components left within the organisation and the relatively expensive services of external parties had to be used. As a consequence of this situation, a project proposed to bring the entire document system up-to-date in one fell swoop, in terms of both software and hardware. The Achmea guideline that every employee should be able to use the same workstation suite and all applications being web-based, was also taken into account.

Aia Software had the solution

Together with Aia Software, Dirk Smit drew up an ambitious plan which was submitted for approval in October 2004. The proposal was to implement ITP/Server on which all document and letters would be generated and they would be developed and managed in the ITP/MDK Repository. All customised applications would be replaced by standard ITP software and the letter book restructured to make it more user friendly. The project eventually began in April 2005 and during the planning stage, Achmea's release schedule for the other computer systems was also taken into account. This ensured that there was no disruption to the benefits expected by the business from other planned implementations. The implementation of the new ITP/OnLine Server solution occurred without need for modifications to the existing systems: the old components were replaced by new ones and only a brief test was needed.

The result

The project was completed in August 2005 and the final deliverables met the ambitious benefits sought. Everyone now works via a browser interface, which is highly intuitive and corresponds so closely with the business process that the end-users needed no training at all!

Dirk Smit: "We streamlined both the applications and the documents, which makes it much easier for the end-users. The letter book is now organized according to process, as opposed to brand, as it was formerly. Staff first select the type of document they require and then the specific brand. The use of the ITP/MDK Repository has enabled far-reaching standardization of the structure of Achea's documents resulting in the number of letter models being reduced from 400 to 200 and has enabled both organization and administration to be performed and controlled centrally."

Output format is determined in the Mortgage System, and in theory can vary. Our aim is to use less paper and process more digitally, using PDF for example, also with a view to digital archiving. "Paper output for the customer is digitised and stored in compliance with strict requirements", Smit explains.
"An eighty-page offer can be printed in duplicate, one copy of which is filed in the paper archive. Digital archiving costs are significantly less and therefore increasingly important from an economic standpoint. In a paper archive mortgage files must be kept for 40 years."
Reports for the HDN (Hypotheek Data Netwerk = Mortgage Data Network) are also produced with ITP.

The project has also delivered many more advantages. 125 annual statements are prepared and issued every January, for example. This year everyone was prepared for several long hard weeks of work to produce these but the job was done within just a few days. Now we have the central ITP/MDK Repository all the models are now in one place. That makes creation and administration simpler, more structured and, above all, faster. Amendments can now be done in-house, reducing both the costs and the time-to-market. The implementation of a new brand that was added recently was also realized very quickly. The entire document-composition solution is now based on standard software: support is therefore warranted and the dependence on custom suppliers has disappeared.

Dirk Smit looks back on a successful project: "We have achieved our ambitious objectives and that is thanks, in part, to the excellent cooperation with Aia Software. Our complimentary fields of expertise enabled us to quickly find a practical solution to any unexpected problem. The old system had a report assessment grade of 4-5; I can safely say that with the new system we are back up to 9."

About Achmea Hypotheekbank

Achmea Hypotheekbank is part of the Achmea Group. Achmea is one of the larger financial service providers in the Benelux. Achmea offers businesses, organizations and consumers a broad package of insurances, bank and mortgage products and services. On an international level the Achmea Group is a Eureko partner. Eureko is a European cooperation of leading service providers.

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