Strategy and business case for centralising mortgage processing and customer service
Irish Permanent is a leading financial services company providing a full range of personal banking products to the Irish market. Following the merger with Irish Life, Irish Permanent initiated a strategic change programme called Vision 21. A major part of the change programme centred on the removal of administration from the branch network thereby allowing the branches to become primarily sales outlets.
An important initiative in achieving the above vision was the centralisation of the mortgage fulfilment process. Mortgage sales and fulfilment were carried out in the retail network, with branches underwriting the loan and progress chasing the application to the point where the Offer Letter is issued. A central unit (Mortgage Centre) “took on” the case to ensure compliance with loan conditions and together with the branch they “managed” the case to the point where the funds were released centrally.
The Vision proposed that the Branch would “sell” the loan (match requirements with product) and then hand the entire case over to the new Customer Service Centre where dedicated Sales Support Agents would perform case management. The perceived benefits were increased sales in the branches together with headcount reduction. At the same time the objective was also to increase capacity and efficiency, as well as providing an improved standard of customer service to customers. This involved a significant change in the way the mortgage sales process was conducted both for the new central area and the branches. A key issue for the organisation was achieving buy-in from the branches in the face of what they could have perceived as an erosion of their control / ownership of the customer.
It was therefore recognised that achieving these gains and buy-in required a best practice, integrated mortgage processing operation, working in a seamless way with branches to fulfil mortgage completion.
CCL were chosen over several major consultancies to help Irish Permanent develop a Blueprint, Strategy, Business Case and task plan to develop the mortgage Customer Service Centre (CSC). The assignment was to take 8 weeks.
A multi-disciplinary project team, comprising Irish Permanent and CCL experts was formed. A Project Manager from CCL was also selected to work alongside the client Project Manager to drive the assignment. Key strategic decisions in areas such as location, technology, level of integration and functionality had to be made before a detailed Blueprint could be produced. Using industry and call centre expertise, CCL guided this decision making process, helping Irish Permanent to understand the full implications of decisions as they were made.
For example, CCL helped Irish Permanent decide how proactive and sales-aware the CSC would be in ensuring that all sales opportunities were maximised. We then helped define the strategic implications of this decision for the project, other channels, and the rest of the organisation.
Next, a detailed Blueprint describing how the CSC would work in all areas was produced. This covered Technology and Telecoms, Operations and Process, HR, Training and Recruitment, Culture, Marketing, Location and Change Management. The Blueprint also detailed operational performance objectives and the resource strategies required to achieve them.
A detailed business case was then produced showing the costs and returns of setting up and running the CSC. The business case allowed different financial scenarios to be modelled, revealing different investment options for building the operation. A risk analysis was produced to accompany this business case.
Finally, a task list was produced stating all the key tasks and project resources required to build the CSC.
The assignment was completed to deadline and Irish Permanent gained all the strategic, financial and operational information required to decide how to successfully implement the CSC.