Vanquis’ move to digital-first customer experiences supercharged by PwC and Salesforce
Delivering great customer outcomes at speed was the driving force behind our Salesforce solution that is enabling the bank to harness the power of the digital ecosystem
Client: Vanquis Banking Group
Our Role: Establishing and deploying a new cloud-based technology roadmap and infrastructure starting with its digital lending business
Industry: Financial Services
Powered by: Salesforce
In 2020, the decline in traditional in-person lending meant specialist lender Vanquis Banking Group faced an urgent need for digital transformation. PwC supported them to launch an entirely new unsecured loans business, whilst putting in place a technology backbone that would allow for ongoing modernisation and a further focus on ensuring their customers’ needs were served.
Three years ago, Vanquis Banking Group (formerly Provident Banking Group) started their transformation journey to pivot towards a new breed of technology and customer facing applications to enable them to engage with their customers through a digital first experience. Not a simple task for an organisation with many legacy systems and a new business model to come to terms with. It represented a chance to break from outdated customer engagement methods and lean into the agile, adaptable nature of the cloud with the right solution and support. Whilst ensuring financial inclusion across its existing and target customers, Vanquis extended its existing relationship with PwC to deliver a new customer centric digital platform across the Group.
Vanquis Banking Group is an established specialist lender to the 14 million customers in the UK who can’t access mainstream credit. With a history going back to 1880, Vanquis had long relied on the accessibility and personal experience provided by its traditional face-to-face lending business. That model for continued growth had already been coming under threat with the rise of FinTech competitors and more agile, tech-enabled incumbents. Hampered by legacy systems, Vanquis had realised that digital transformation was needed to not only scale and adapt to new markets, but to remain relevant and focussed on maintaining quality outcomes for its customers.
Working together, we implemented a Salesforce solution to bring Vanquis’ plans to market and to prove the value of the approach to the wider business.
The Challenge: Deliver a digital-first experience - while maintaining a focus on customer care
Facing market challenges from both FinTech competitors and more agile tech-enabled incumbents, Vanquis had already been considering an overhaul of its legacy IT infrastructure. Multiple acquisitions over the course of its 140 year history had left the lender with a multitude of older systems that weren’t compatible with one another. As a result, many processes were manual and data could not be shared with other parts of the business.
Vanquis found this was holding them back - not just from being able to scale and adapt like more tech-enabled competitors, but in being able to efficiently deliver a seamless customer experience.
The company was also aware that a more connected and transparent view across what services a customer had would also allow them to better deliver a wider range of products to meet their customer’s needs. That visibility and data would help them make better recommendations and compete more effectively with FinTechs that could offer integrated services and omnichannel customer service.
In addition, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns, drove huge parts of society and daily life online. In response to this skyrocketing market demand and continuing need to be there for customers, Vanquis decided to set up a new online lending business.
Our solution: An agile Salesforce platform, embedded with our support on implementation
Vanquis had a clear idea of what they wanted to achieve - a solution that would minimise costs to serve customers while creating a flexible, customer journey that delivered good customer outcomes at speed. But if this project was going to flourish, it was important to make it more than a technology project. Vanquis needed to change its approach to change so people would embrace this new technology.
PwC’s previous work with Vanquis meant that we brought a track record in project delivery. More importantly, we also had an understanding of not just their business challenges - but also their culture and how their people would need to be brought along on the journey. We worked to help create the case for transformation and define the service blueprints that the business needed to deliver its desired results. This involved designing an innovative, API-first architecture powered by a FinTech ecosystem, with Salesforce at the core.
As an experienced integrator of Salesforce - and with a deep understanding of financial services - PwC were able to help Vanquis see what their end result would look like to inform decisions. In particular, our pre-built asset named Tysl designed for Banking allowed fast-tracking, show and tell and rapid deployment timeframes. The team were able to be agile, making use of prototypes and remote working to launch the platform in just nine months.
“The current climate proves once again why lenders need to ensure they have built in agility across core technology stacks to facilitate rapid responses to market changes.”
“Above all, the need to provide flawless and engaging customer experiences is still very much #1 on lenders’ to-do list.”
Outcome: A successful and scalable new platform for Vanquis and further investment within the Bank
The platform developed to support Vanquis loans has now been live since late 2021 and the benefits to Vanquis Banking Group were clear. Customer onboarding is faster and more competitive with FinTechs, providing the technology and architecture to better react and deliver its services within the heavily regulated financial service landscape. In addition, the company has gained the ability to have much closer customer insights that better serve its customers and offers better opportunities for cross-selling and promotions to suitable customers.
Collectively, we achieved this within nine months and ensured the new digital lending business was launched rapidly and the overall move to digital for Vanquis was kickstarted at pace.
This programme has been used to launch further applications including a new Credit Card platform for its customers. Again, delivering an improved digital first customer experience all delivered on the Salesforce platform to allow for rapid and simplified changes to be made as clients demand increased services and responsiveness. The roadmap is now set for migrating other parts of the business onto Salesforce and breaking down customer data silos.
“We are investing in our future technology platform and working with PwC, who are moving quickly to deliver these new capabilities to meet the needs of our customers.”
Contact us
Customer Led Transformation Leader, Midlands Consulting and Financial Services Lead, PwC United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)7841 567045
