How we built the software platform accessed by >120 banks and managing >17 billion CHF for the COVID-19 credits allowed by the Swiss Government

Building a highly secure software platform and banks portal to host COVID-19 credits and balance updates

On March 25th, 2020, the Swiss Federal Council decided to grant emergency aid to Swiss companies in the form of COVID-19 guaranteed transitional credits to cushion the economic consequences of the pandemic. As a result of Federal Council measures, the number of credits has risen to 130,000 by end of July 2020 and still increases. On top of this emergency aid, the law of March 25th requests banks to report several times a year the credit amortization and balance to the central software platform managed by the Swiss guarantee organizations Bürgschaftsgenossenschaften (BGS). To host and consolidate the large volume of COVID-19 credits from Banks to guarantee organizations, the SECO and BGS mandated OWT to extend the central software platform and develop the banks portal, a new system to securely and efficiently transmit and process financial data. The objective of the project was hence twofold: on one hand, to extend the central software platform and build a portal to allow >120 banks in providing reports, and on the other hand, to automate processes for the reconciliation of >137 000 COVID-19 credits data provided by the banks in the existing BGS platform already hosting thousands of business credits for Swiss companies.

Extend a core software platform and build a Bank Portal to automate the exchange of COVID-19 credits balances

Through our Business Process Engineering methodology, we integrated the new process of managing the COVID-19 credits in the existing central software platform. Due to emergency timeline, we setup a SCRUM task force with business consultants, architects, and software developers.

With another similar SCRUM team, together with our client, we refined the priorities and conducted interviews of 11 pilot banks representatives, accounting for more than 60% of all COVID-19 credits requested. We identified core functionalities to implement a simple, highly secure Bank Portal.

In the team, our UX and security experts, designed a workflow allowing bank users to register, activate, and login securely, while keeping BGS and banks informed of the accounts used. The solution needed to allow bank users to submit data, verify its coherence with the expected format, and send it towards the BGS central software platform.

Following an agile methodology, we developed the solution from the bottom-up, keeping in mind the security aspects for the architecture and each component of the project. We notably conducted an internal security audit and were subject to an external technical evaluation to ensure the robustness and “banking grade” of the solution.

A digital Journey

• Analysis of users' needs and COVID-19 credits reporting needs according to the law, SECO and BGS directives.
• Business processes engineering and data flows optimization including specific rules (integrity, reconciliation, etc..)
• Definition of the functionalities and architecture of the solutions.
• Design and implementation of the credits central software platform and the secure Banks Portal.
• Change Management regarding the Banks Portal adoption
   

Reconciliating automatically a large quantity of new data in the existing data lake

The reconciliation part of our solution needed a tremendous effort on the algorithm side: the team developed a “Reconciliation algorithm”, matching data provided by the Banks with the ones of the BGS. Notably, a “suggestion algorithm” was developed, allowing to manage incomplete data provided by the banks.

The data process automatization enabled our client to allocate only a reduced manual effort in the reconciliation of COVID-19 data.

We are glad to have supported the SECO and the guarantee organizations (BGS) in the midst of the pandemic crisis, and are confident that our solution will help to focus also in their main mission: facilitating the access to credits for Swiss companies.

Highly sensitive Change Management to rollout the Banks Portal process and solution

To allow an immediate and efficient adoption of the solution by the Banks and according to the emergency law, OWT provided the Change Management service through its strong methodology including the documentation, communications flows and content, webinars and follow-up. Alongside the change management provided to BGS and Banks, we set up a highly reactive support team to help BGS answering questions received by users.