The implementation of Service-oriented Architecture(SOA) transformed the fabric of digital banking at HDFC Bank. Here’s how.

Business context

In the mid-2010s, HDFC Bank realised that the banking industry was headed towards a future of hyper-personalised services. On the other hand, Indian banks were dealing with challenges such as increased interest rates and high inflation. These conditions compelled the Bank to redesign their service catalogue with a stronger technology focus. Thus, emerged Service-oriented Architecture.

Solution deployed

With Oracle’s help, the implementation of SOA opened up many avenues for digital banking. SOA integrated various pieces of the Bank’s infrastructure and provided a single source for customer data that could be retrieved dynamically. The multi-channel/multi-system real-time integration along with next-gen security and authentication features significantly reduced the turnaround-time for the Bank’s applications and platforms.

Benefits

The implementation helped HDFC Bank streamline real-time credit card payment and reduced the personal loan and credit card approval time to 10 seconds.

“When we launched the 10 second product (PL approval), we got one-year worth of our PL book and the revenue associated with it in one quarter.” – Munish Mittal, Group Head-IT and CIO, HDFC Bank LTD

The SOA simplified and automated most customer-end processes with little to no manual intervention. This created real-time, environmentally conscious “green” systems which reduced costs for the Bank.

SOA created a wide range of real-time payment options for an enhanced customer experience:

• Payments to vendors in real time (EBS integration)
• Payments to agencies in real time (CPSMS integration)
• Easy transition of kiosk and social banking operations
• Support for POS, ATM, and IVR alongside existing Net banking options for CC
• Easier onboarding and payment processing for corporate customers