“Going live with the new Financial Services Data Platform” – this might at first glance seem rather technical, but for Berlin Hyp this simply signifies a milestone in the modernisation of the Bank. “We have built up a completely new data world”, says Thomas Haeske, head of IT at Berlin Hyp. The big advantage is that the platform can be easily filled from all modules of the IT system of the core banking and now lays the foundation for all subsequent steps to migrate Berlin Hyp’s entire core banking system to the SAP HANA platform.

Thus, all essential data is collected and stored at one point and according to a uniform standard. This “Single Point of Truth” logic ensures, firstly, that the number of IT interfaces is reduced and system discontinuities are largely avoided. Most processes run automated; transfer errors or time-consuming manual data fitting are things of the past. It also enables the Bank to respond more quickly and flexibly to future amended or new requirements resulting from the business or introduced by supervising authorities.

The final objective is to have a fully digitised lending process and a bank that is almost real-time capable. In practice, this means, for example, that the centrally collected data on a financing can be imported into the individual applications at the push of a button or even automated. The end result is a reporting, risk analysis or other document that is completed more quickly and is built on a better basis. And thanks to the uniform standard for recording and processing data, the analyses and conclusions based on it can be directly retraced by everyone involved in the Bank.

In such a completely digitised workflow, the customer advisers are largely relieved of standard and reporting processes. This gives them additional scope for dialogue with customers, the analysis of markets and financing and the design of new approaches.

And that’s how a technical-sounding topic becomes a real benefit for the Bank and its customers.