Philippine Bank of Communications – PBCOMobile
CLIENTS
PBCOM (Philippine Bank of Communications) is a commercial bank that offers a broad suite of financial services for Deposits, Corporate, Commercial and Personal Loans, Cash Management Solutions, and Investments. Founded in 1939, PBCOM has its roots in Binondo, Manila, and now has almost one hundred branches located across Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao.
PBCOM has recently taken a challenger bank approach to technology and software to digitize and streamline retail banking. Challenger banks use digital distribution channels, typically mobile, to offer competitive retail banking services that target underserved and unserved demographics. The approach uses an improved user experience, appealing to those who want to be able to bank from their phones instead of visiting a bank branch.
Project Brief
PBCom collaborated with Exist to build “PBCOMobile”, a mobile banking application for iOS and Android phones that allows its new customers to open a PBCom account online and perform most banking transactions without the need to ever visit a bank branch.
Challenges
In order to offer a scalable and flexible infrastructure for the challenger bank approach, PBCOM needed to quickly develop new mobile banking platform that could utilize PBCOM’s new core banking system running on the cloud. This new core banking system had a full suite of APIs that were previously unavailable.
Solution
Exist developed the mobile banking application that PBCOM envisioned with some of the most notable open-source technologies of our time.
- PBCOMobile was developed in cloud wherein the application code is delivered in small, manageable pieces independent of each other. It brings in easier maintenance, improved productivity, greater fault tolerance, and better business alignment
- Exist used container technologies which make it easier to create, deploy, and run applications.
- Exist implemented Mesosphere DC/OS to effectively manage microservices. Each service is easily deployable and configurable. It allows high-availability for the applications as well as a health check and status checking
- PBCOMobile currently uses Apache to temporarily store important data such as audit logs and notifications until an available consumer is ready to process them. This provides assurance that no data will be lost.
- Mulesoft is used to map and transform data based on the desired request and/or response format.
- Exist also used the most advanced open-source database system, PostgreSQL
Results
For the Business:
The engagement allowed PBCOM leapfrog most of the local banks by offering mobile account opening, self-service debit card management and mobile check deposits. It improved business traction. PBCOM is acquring new clients and customers everyday due to the new system. They were also expand the relationship of existing customers with this innovation. This was also rolled out in time to service Filipinos during the community quarantine brought about the COVID-19 pandemic.
For the Customers:
The application offered a faster, easier, and more convenient way to open accounts, deposit checks, transfer money, and pay bills. It is an additional platform for customers to do banking transactions remotely.
Because of its timely delivery and competitive pricing, Exist remains a key technology partner for PBCOM. As of now, they are having continuous discussions to enhance the application. There is also an existing maintenance agreement for PBCOMobile to ensure its efficient operation and performance.
