RAMS Dons Golden Fleece

By Liam Tung

January 22nd, 2007: Maintaining your lead in the home loan market is no easy task. It involves clever marketing, a committed team and information systems that support core services. Liam Tung explores how RAMS sharpened its competitive edge.

RAMS Home Loans rose to prominence during Australia’s most pervasive property boom. Since 1995 it has successfully tapped the Australian fondness for services that challenge the stranglehold banks have over the home loan market and devised a clever image for itself that at once is earnest yet determined. The RAMS logo conjures an endearing Australian icon – the ram - known for its single-minded determination as well as its contributions to our development as a trading nation. After all it was apparently the sheep’s back we rode to get there.

Of course this image must be backed by substance, which is evidenced by the awards RAMS has achieved through industry and consumer associations for its service and competitive rates. The non-bank financial lender devised a targeted strategy unsettling the big banks and helping it rise to its current position, but it also knew competition is never far behind. To stay ahead of its competition it has had to create a nimble and flexible infrastructure to help it respond to the dynamic housing market.

While RAMS’ ability to be responsive has guided the development of its extensive network of branches and brokers, it has recently sought to improve the support it provides to this network. As any successful leader knows, competitive markets reward those who deliver first. For RAMS this means processing loan applications better and faster than its competitors.

Whetting the blade
RAMS had already captured 10 million documents over the past decade, which were being stored in its legacy system. This was a prudent decision from a compliance perspective, but it still left processing subject to the limitations of paper. With such a distributed network of players this was critical to whetting its competitive edge.

Mark Austin, RAMS’ IT manager sought a system that would enable it to pursue a strategy to minimise processing times and generate loans faster. By targeting process efficiencies closer to its revenue source, RAMS would be able to maximise its chances of success by beating competitors to the mark.

Part of Austin’s vision for RAMS involved breaking the back of its dependence on paper. Austin knew a web-based interface was an obvious component to the solution, but the system needed to meet stringent privacy and document retention regulations applicable to the finance sector.

Loan applications at RAMS require the involvement of a combination of head office and branch staff, external lawyers and brokers. Individuals involved in processing need fast access to relevant documents and are often in different locations. The fact that brokers partner with a number of loan providers also makes it vital for RAMS to service this channel swiftly.

Defining requirements and sourcing the solution
To achieve RAMS’ goal, Austin sought a solution that would enable it to capture loan applications at their point of creation and securely store document images in a central repository from which each person could securely access documents via a web-interface.

Knowing that each application can contain many separate documents, a key requirement was the ability to index documents in an application-centric fashion, enabling users to easily locate supporting documents containing the applicant’s identity, income and financial status. Hence the system needed to be simple for users to understand, yet sophisticated enough to handle RAMS’ goal of sharing information with the appropriate people while meeting complex privacy and recordkeeping regulatory obligations.

RAMS also needed a solution that would be able to meet the tight processing SLA’s yet flexible enough to meet peak demand periods, as well as reduce the risk of over-capitalisation during troughs. Considering this, Austin opted to outsource RAMS’ document capture and storage to Speedscan, a Sydney-based document management solutions provider.

The solution proposed by Speedscan involved establishing a single fax number for brokers and staff to send applications and corresponding documents to. Given RAMS’ extensive network of external partners, the proposed system offered the flexibility to respond to changing demand without affecting its capital outlay. If a new market or region developed, the same fax number could be issued to new brokers or branches. As it rolled the new system out to its branches, RAMS could leverage its existing telecommunications infrastructure. In addition the web-interface would enable key people involved in processing applications access to the same document, thereby reducing paper-handling and duplication while minimising the chances of misplaced documents.Speedscan also provides ongoing services for the scanning and processing of paper-based documents where they still exist in the process.

“From an accessibility perspective, it’s exactly what we want,” says Austin. “It allows us to have more mobility and have our lawyers, our solicitors, and our staff simply able to log on.”

The implementation and conversion of the legacy documents took Speedscan only two months to complete. To deliver the solution Speedscan worked closely with Unisys, RAMS’ processing partner, and the system now serves over 200 concurrent internal and external users. If a project’s success is assessed by the popularity of the new system’s use, that these 200 users collectively access the central repository almost 20,000 times per month should prove the point.

A key factor for RAMS, was that Speedscan’s solution included hosting RAMS’ documents at Speedscan’s Macquarie Intellicentre data centre. With data security such a major concern for RAMS, says Austin, “Where it was hosted was important. It had to be in a proper, secured environment.”

The Speedscan solution therefore provides significant redundancy and business continuity features for RAMS documents and the fact it is off-site also covers off a significant component of its disaster recovery strategy.

With Phase 1 of the project successfully rolled out to all of RAMS’ offices, RAMS is confident of further benefits once the entire process has been completed. No doubt, Austin’s seniors at RAMS will also be pleased having avoided the infrastructure and setup costs normally associated with securing information in a world-class data centre. Austin, with the help of Speedscan and Unisys has helped deliver a system to RAMS that is flexible, scalable and most importantly embeds processes that help it generate revenue and increase its market value. Whatever RAMS does in the future, with a platform and system that facilitates process improvements like this, it has certainly added a golden lustre to its otherwise healthy fleece.

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