Creating a Flexible, Secure Lending Platform

Challenge

First Canadian Title is one of Canada’s leading title insurance organizations. They support a wide array of different customers including lenders, legal professionals, real-estate agents and mortgage brokers, all of whom have differing needs and rely on FCT for a unique assortment of services.

FCT’s previous lending platform was instrumental for the facilitation of its services – namely the automation of real estate transactions – but it presented a series of business challenges. Growing customer complexities, increased operational costs and technical debt proved too much for the aging system to handle.

Recognizing the technical limitations of the existing lending platform, FCT management sought a modernized solution which could provide added flexibility and ensure faster, more efficient customer service.

“We like their methodology. Rather than just jumping into the code they spend time to appreciate the business process, not only for the minimum viable product but for the whole program. That gives us more confidence that we’re not dealing with a short-term vendor. They are in it for a longer term. — CIO, FCT”

Solution

AppCentrica was engaged to design a new solution which would serve as the successor to FCT’s aging lending platform.

Due to the highly complex and unique nature of FCT services, which vary by product, mortgage, lender, municipality and province, a fully custom solution was required. As a result, a vital first step in this multi-year project saw AppCentrica gathering requirements and building out a comprehensive program outline and reference architecture.

Once cross functional buy-in had been established from all relevant stakeholders, AppCentrica started on development of the new common lending platform.

The new solution was developed primarily on the Microsoft .net core platform and introduced event driven architecture, microservices technologies as well as a responsive front-end allowing FCT customers and staff to access the platform from their preferred device.

Outcomes

The finalized system offers the robust flexibility FCT required to provide an optimal customer experience. The new lending platform is designed to offer configurable services programs for FCT’s customers, automating the end-to-end information capture and conveyance processes for real estate transactions, which are notoriously complicated.

Additionally, the system is designed to be easily integrated with external systems (e.g. Land Title Systems), internal systems (e.g. fraud detection and regulatory reporting) and third-party point solutions for document management.

Overall, the new lending platform has enabled FCT to provide an even better customer experience as well as offering:

• Increased profitability
• Expanded revenue opportunities through faster onboarding
• Reduced risk (more visibility and the ability to audit individual transactions faster and with a higher degree of accuracy)
• Reduced burden on in-house service team and the ability to provide customer support faster

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