Zurich Finance Corporation

Zurich Finance Corporation quickly proved itself to be a successful business with a promising future, but it faced three main problems:

1. Scalability

The business seemed to have reached the limit of what could be done with its existing core banking platform, leaving little opportunity for further growth. 

2. Inconsistent operations 

Decentralised operations had led to loan policies being interpreted or applied differently from location to location. The loan monitoring system relied on manual processes and a combination of spreadsheets, emails, and phone. The process urgently required centralising and digitalising. 

3. Internet connectivity 

Areas of southern Luzon suffer from slow internet speeds, intermittent connections, and occasionally no service at all. Even areas with good access can have it temporarily wiped out by a flood, typhoon, or earthquake. 

The man tasked with addressing all these problems was Ronaldo Recto, a Managing Director of ZFC who is currently president of the Rural Bank of San Antonio, part of the same family of companies. 

Ron first heard of Oradian while at business school. He already knew that its cloud-based core banking system was designed specifically to cope with the challenges of rural and remote locations. He made sure Oradian was one of the companies invited to discuss the project. 

“We went through the process of evaluating the core services, benefits, and partnerships, and quickly drew up a shortlist, finally selecting Oradian,” he recalls. 

Oradian solves scalability challenges in multiple ways. First, there are literally no barriers to growth – Oradian’s platform is as capable supporting a major bank as the smallest microfinance institution. And because it is hosted in the cloud, you never have to buy and maintain extra servers or bandwidth to accommodate your growth – everything is taken care of in the cloud.  

Oradian is also the most affordable way to grow – the subscription price you pay is based on portfolio size, and there are no hidden extras.

“One of the major improvements was the way that we could implement loan policies over a larger area because of the way Oradian is designed,” says Ron. With customers having to complete mandatory fields when applying for loans, local officers were unable to intervene with tailor-made and concessions without needing to seek authorisation. 

It was Oradian’s Customer Success team that first drew ZFC’s attention to the potential of the Field Officer App to deal with the absence or unreliability of internet connectivity. Originally designed for use by field officers in micro-finance institutions, Oradian customised the app for use by ZFC’s credit investigators to validate information submitted by loan applicants.  

Credit investigators prepare their risk assessments and photograph the client’s assets in remote offline locations, knowing that as soon as their smartphones reconnect to the internet the information will automatically be uploaded to Oradian’s core platform. From there it is accessed by the credit assessment team in the corporation’s head office.

“The default rate went down by 50%.” 

The most dramatic effect was a rapid decline in the number of customers defaulting on their loans. “The default rate went down by 50% because we were able to implement consistent loan policies,” says Ron. He admits the scale of the improvement was unexpected. “We were surprised by the figures because we were primarily dealing with very risky customers.” 

Operational efficiency has also vastly improved. Recording repayments, for example, formerly involved many stages to ensure proper oversight. “With Oradian, the repayment is booked and that’s it. It’s posted in real time and there’s no other process,” says Ron. 

The automatic syncing procedures have also overcome the problems of poor internet connectivity, streamlining workflows, and greatly improving the day-to-day running of ZFC’s business. Making accurate credit assessments is now much quicker and easier.