16 November 2020 – Lendscape today announces that key client Allied Irish Bank (AIB) has completed a major technology initiative with the migration of its receivables finance operations to Lendscape’s fully cloud-hosted platform.
The migration means that AIB’s entire UK and Republic of Ireland receivables finance platforms are now fully and securely hosted externally by Lendscape. Alongside the platform migration, there has also been a major software update to AIB’s LendScape solution, which now offers a one-stop package of receivables finance features, including a new web portal for AIB’s SME customers that enhances user experience and the bank’s ability to offer funding. This is the first time that the LendScape platform has been hosted for an existing major bank client.
Kevin Day, CEO of Lendscape, said: “We’re thrilled to have worked together with AIB on this platform migration. AIB is one of our most longstanding customers, and this project required extremely close collaboration between the technical and business functions on both sides. Most importantly, this project demonstrates that large scale migration of major bank receivables finance functions can be completed successfully at low risk and will enable AIB to provide improved access to finance for UK and Irish businesses, which is much needed in these difficult economic times.”
The solution upgrade and migration are aligned to AIB’s wider cloud initiatives in helping to future proof its IT infrastructure. Also, allowing operations to be hosted by Lendscape simplifies AIB’s product management, lowers costs, and allows the bank to more easily scale up and upgrade its services to keep it at the leading edge of the market.
The platform migration has been completed within a wider context of the pandemic shifting banks’ priorities regarding digital redevelopment projects, with several global banks undergoing cloud-first transformations in recent months. Even before the current economic crisis, many large banks were creating efficiencies by outsourcing major applications, and this initiative is an excellent example of achieving this as well as enhancing client services.
David Avery, Head of AIB Commercial Finance, commented: “Completing this exercise is an important initiative for AIB. Having our receivables finance business operating on a hosted cloud platform means our customers now have a better, more seamless way of accessing funding, boosts our efficiency in this area, helps to expand the range of services we can offer and enables us to be more agile. As a longstanding client of Lendscape, we were very happy with how the two teams worked together so closely to ensure a smooth delivery, and I look forward to continuing our relationship for many more years to come.”
AIB is a longstanding Lendscape client, with the two companies having worked together since 1988. AIB has run the ‘LendScape’ solution on premises since 2007.
Over half of Irish SMEs surveyed have identified access to credit as their biggest challenge, while they are three times as likely to use bank funding as their UK counterparts. The Central Bank of Ireland identified earlier this year that many Irish SMEs would not be in a position to meet a collective multi-billion Euro liquidity need from their internal resources, existing credit lines and new bank lending without additional support.
Invoice finance, along with wider bank support and government initiatives, is one major route to this liquidity, with total invoice finance volumes in Ireland reaching €28.6bn last year.
For any press and media inquiries contact: Jessica Tabaqchali, Sapience Communications:
jtabaqchali@sapiencecomms.co.uk