Innovative digital transformation delivers cost and time savings – and 20 million digital customers onboarded – for Home Credit China
/ EmbedIT transformed IT architectures and processes to turn Home Credit China from an inflexible offline business to an agile customer-focused digital business at the top of its market.
/ Innovative technologies, including applications modernisation, data analytics and AI-based decisioning, together with a move to a microservices-based infrastructure enabled EmbedIT to radically update Home Credit’s infrastructure and operations.
/ Top benefits included reducing underwriting from 30 minutes to less than 10, bringing millions of new online customers and delivering a forward looking IT architecture that could adapt and scale with the business.
Location
Czech Republic, China
Expertise
Custom development
Business transformation
Digital transformation
Data management
Oracle / JAVA
The challenge
In 2007, Home Credit launched in China to deliver consumer finances services (including loans and credit products) for affordable and practical ways of purchasing goods for underbanked customers across the country. By 2019, it was the market leader in China, with over 7 million active customers accessing services through 380,000 points of sale (POS).
But this operating model relied significantly on face-to-face interactions and manual workflows, which were slow, inefficient and costly to manage. In addition, customers were increasingly expecting digital interactions – and to have services made available across multiple channels – and Home Credit’s systems made this very hard to deliver on time and without significant work or cost.
To keep its position in the marketplace, Home Credit realised that it needed to change the way it operated and turn the business into an online business with digital workflows that would increase operational efficiencies and reflect the importance of digital channels for reaching customers and driving sales.
Some of the company’s biggest technology challenges included:
An outdated monolithic applications architecture which was complex, time-consuming and risky to update.
A test environment built as a copy of the production database that took weeks to set up, dramatically slowing down the rollout of new features and products to the marketplace – and presenting security risks due to potential personal data leakage.
Processes based on large amounts of manual work, including identity checking and underwriting – which restricted how many loans could be processed and how much of the processes could be delivered digitally.
A customer experience that lagged behind, including a mobile app with limited functionality, which was negatively impacting customer engagement and satisfaction.
The solution
Working with EmbedIT, the Home Credit team kicked off a significant digital transformation project designed to modernise its core infrastructure and optimise operations. The project drew on EmbedIT’s previous experience delivering similar consumer finance projects in other geographies, and brought together products and expertise from across the EmbedIT portfolio, including infrastructure services, data, AI and analytics, channel transformation and advanced cyber security.
Key parts of the solution delivered included:
/ Moving from monolithic to microservices, Home Credit’s main service platform (HOMER) was redesigned to increase transaction speeds and enable seamless integration with digital platforms. such as online marketplaces and the customer mobile app (CAPP). It also delivered a flexible, agile architecture that could react quickly to future business changes.
/ Migrating the database server operating system, creating a license- and security-compliant solution that merged Oracle and Linux clusters to improve database performance, and enable faster and more secure rollout of system changes and improvements without any downtime. More efficient handling of test data delivered huge cost savings and efficiency improvements, and elevated data security standards while also shortening user acceptance testing (UAT) cycles.
/ Rolling out Oracle GoldenGate to deliver fast, reliable database replication through the separation of production database clusters, including the HOMER platform and customer database, to speed up development and version releases.
/ Creating a knowledge gateway a centralised hub developed by EmbedIT for online access and management of customer data, providing valuable insights and enabling informed decision-making, especially through the customer scoring and underwriting process.
/ Optimising and expanding the CAPP mobile app with the addition of servicing functions, access to other channels such as WeChat, and features such as marketplace integration and loyalty programmes.
“EmbedIT’s advanced technologies and innovative solutions have been instrumental in accelerating real progress for Home Credit China. Optimising key processes, reducing time-to-market, embracing scalable architecture – and working together as one – it’s what enabled us to move our business further faster and cement our position as leader of the financial services market in China.”
Eddy Tai
CIO, Home Credit China
The Benefits
As a result of this project, Home Credit China was able to move its business further faster by:
/ Reducing the time it took to build testing databases from weeks to less than 24 hours.
/ Shortening loan underwriting times from up to 30 minutes to under 10 minutes.
/ Onboarding over 7 million new digital customers in two years, doubling the size of the customer base.
/ Increasing daily approved contract volumes to achieve over 115,000 per day.
/ Delivering a new end-to-end digital customer journey, with 40 million registered users of the CAPP mobile app, with 8 million monthly average users (MAU).
The financial services sector in China has long been characterised by rapid growth and technological innovation. And with the digital transformation enabled by EmbedIT, Home Credit China became agile enough to adapt and scale as the marketplace changed – enabling Home Credit to continue being a leader in exceptional consumer finance solutions driving positive outcomes for customers and stakeholders.
