HBOS Mortgage Accounts Computer Glitch - A Discussion
Published by Rajgo October 20th, 2006 in Business Rules, BRMS, Rule Engine, QuickRules.NET, BRE, Business Rule Engine, Business Rules Management System, Insurance, BankingI started checking out Bankwatch recently, and this post caught my attention,
BankNet 360 - Computer Glitch Reeks Havoc on HBOS Mortgage Accounts
Pretty interesting. Now check out this excerpt
Approximately 7,000 customers of the Bank of Scotland, which is part of HBOS, reported seeing additional monthly mortgage payments taken from their accounts this month
As we work with the technology team, be careful what we ask for, because we may just get it …. and then we may learn that’s not what we expected. Real innovation really requires a business group that can intelligently talk to the development team, without “relationship managers” posing as translators /business analysts. Technology is the business and we all have to understand it.
Now, one of our customers is a large Insurance Firm.One of the problems that they discovered was that they had been overpaying on their insurance claims for a long time. They started externalizing their Claim validation & payment rules using QuickRules, and in the process they discovered this system error.
In Banking systems, the Business Policies/Rules are very complex, and always needs the involvement of the bankers/business guys. Issues start cropping up because the IT systems are rigid and opaque, ruling out any but the traditional way for IT & the business to interact and collaborate. How very inefficient!
Now, answer this!
- What if all these complexities (at least as IT sees it) are somehow suddenly visible to the bankers directly?
- What if they are able to look into the system themselves, and suggest changes/modifications directly to the IT team?
- What if the bankers are able to watch& control the change to their policies directly without any other intervention, or without any translators/relationship Managers.
You see, what the business needs to push for is a Business Rules Management System (BRMS). BRMS are built to solve exactly these kinds of problems
Thats a very coherent description of what the ideal state might look like.
Not sure if describing it as an ideal state is a complement or a Dig :).
Now, none of my 3 questions in my post are impossible situations, or situations that have not been seen.
Implementation I have come across.
1. Pages & pages of Mortgage Eligibility Rules in the Loan Origination Process captured and managed using a BRMS
2. Very complex Rules for managing sales force commission calculations
3. Insurance Claims validation, pricing, settlement & approval rules running into 100’s of Rules
4. And many others.
If this was the year 2000, then I would have agreed that the situation is ideal, but BRMS is now a reasonably mature technology and the industry has seen many successful implementations.
The point is this. If the objective is to automate Business Decision Making, then the Decision Makers MUST be able to see & change the Business Rules that drive the Decision making. You can do that only with a BRMS for complex and large numbers of rules