The bank lends primarily to the prime segment of the UK mortgage market. This segment is particularly price-sensitive, with lenders competing to offer the lowest deals, which has led to erosion of their profit margins. The UK mortgage market is also extremely dynamic and has become more volatile in the face of the current economic climate. Lenders need to repeatedly structure and introduce new products to exploit market opportunities. There is also a considerable customer churn and volatility with a significant proportion of business being re-mortgages which often leads to wide fluctuations in transactional volumes, as for example, when fixed rate deals expire and borrowers seek new offers.

The bank aims to enhance its market share in the mortgage market, whilst simultaneously improving profit margins and driving up customer service. The bank concluded after considerable research and due diligence that Firstsource was the right partner to help it achieve these objectives.

Firstsource supported the bank’s aims by providing high scalability and flexibility to the operations, implementing various process and cultural improvements, which increased the bank’s mortgage operational efficiencies at a reduced cost. By faster service, higher accuracy levels and improved peak management, such key functions as offer producton and customer retention were dramatically transformed.

Scalability and Flexibility for Operational Capability

• A multi-skilling module was adopted to optimize use of skilled staff to support volume peaks. Advisors were trained to handle peaks of up to 100% transaction volumes. A bespoke skills matrix was devised to maximize those skills
• A mirror site was established in Kolkata to support the Mumbai operation and mitigate risk in the event of downtime and to diversify the labor pool
• Firstsource minimized security risks by complete elimination of paper/print based tasks and deployed various risk management control systems. For example data integrity was maintained by adopting 'Thin Client’ technology, thus eliminating any offshore data storage
• The working window has been expanded from the standard operating times of 8 hour into a 16 hour operating environment – which has improved access to customers

Process Improvements to Drive Better Customer Experience

• Firstsource implemented process improvements by identifying gaps and improving the processes by using a blend of Lean and Six Sigma methodology. The improvements led to a higher level of efficiency, turnaround time and accuracy through:
      - Standardization of operating procedures across all teams
      - Considerable and rapid reduction in fax-back correspondence


• The turnaround time for some processes has reduced from 10 days to 48 hours – not only vastly improving response to customers, but reducing costs
• Firstsource, backed by its strong imaging and workflow management capability, studied and then optimized the bank’s workflow systems

Cost Management

• Process efficiencies and productivity improvements have significantly improved costs
• A more flexible use of human resource at a lower cost than onshore has also driven beneficial pricing for the bank

• Improved accuracy - Firstsource has enabled the bank to reduce error rates and reduce the number of customer complaints from 30 a week to 8 a week
• Improved turnaround times through process efficiencies and an expanded working window – in some areas turnaround has been reduced by 8 days
• Cost reduction of more than 40%

All these benefits gave the bank the ability and speed to launch new products and add new customer segments.

This successful partnership has been recognized by the Everest Group’s Outsourcing Excellence Awards which awarded ‘The Most Flexible category’ to Firstsource and the client. The judges selected the winners on the basis of the partners’ ability to demonstrate best practice, create and sustain a competitive advantage, provide business transformation, achieve value and mutually benefit both buyer and supplier.