Bendigo and Adelaide Bank stands up a single EDMS

Bendigo and Adelaide Bank has stood up a single enterprise document management system (EDMS) that it says is improving a range of processes, from loan origination to document retention and disposal.

The bank retrieved and consolidated 15 million documents from various systems into a cloud-based EDMS that uses technology including Microsoft's SharePoint Online and Infosys Cobalt.

The completion of the EDMS - it was stood up in 2021, with document migrations occurring over the past two years - is another milestone in the bank's ongoing digital improvement program.

Bendigo and Adelaide Bank is currently working through a large program aimed at modernising its technology stack and is continuing to complete foundational work as part of this effort.

The new EDMS enables the bank to provide centralised access to documents, while also being able to assign and manage security and access permissions.

Practice lead for lending technology Nathalie Moss said the bank’s employees "are now able to service customers faster and more easily due to the centralised document storage and common searchable access approach.”

"The key to the program led by Infosys is findability - the faster we can find all relevant customer documents, the more deeply we understand the customer and the more personalised the service we offer becomes, every time we interact," she said.

“Better operational flow equals more effective and empowered staff and builds on the customer experience our bank offers."

Moss outlined to iTnews a series of benefits being seen now that the EDMS is live and in production use.

She noted loan application processes, in particular, involve "significant documentation" on all sides.

“Inbound documents include identification, supporting evidence of collateral against the loan, while outbound documents include communications from the bank," she told iTnews.

Moss said multiple systems across the bank previously made it difficult for bankers to track documents or process requests, and this "contributed to longer wait times" in what is a very competitive part of the banking industry.

“The new cloud-based platform enabled better collaboration among bankers by helping them access and modify content in real-time," she said.

“The platform significantly improved collaboration by allowing the ability to drag and drop files and filter and search by metadata, banker's name and document name."

Outside of the loans business, Moss said the consolidated EDMS "uplifted and simplified our letter generation capability, automating document preparation, population, storage, digital or print distribution, and auto populating metadata to assist with lifecycle management."

In addition, she said it had improved document lifecycle management.

"The impossible job of searching and finding documents that should no longer be retained, is managed for us by EDMS," Moss said.

"This has a game changing impact for document retention and ultimately for data security for all our customers."

Simplification approach

Moss added that the project fits with broader goals for Bendigo and Adelaide Bank to "simplify, modernise and digitise our systems and processes”.

“The creation of an enterprise document management system addresses this goal by providing integrated, API-enabled, and reusable capability for all document generation, storage and lifecycle management across the bank," she said.

“This broader strategy of simplification in business and technology has dramatically simplified our technology landscape and driven uplift in efficiency, security, and reduction in cost to maintain.”

Moss said other examples of simplification include the consolidation of “five bank brands and their related technology systems onto a common core”.

Integrations include the full integration of Delphi Bank and the delivery of PayTo to banking customers.

“Also, this year, the bank has built and delivered a new collateral management system, migrating hundreds of thousands of collaterals/securities from eight different source systems to one modernised API-enabled solution for the enterprise," Moss said.