The Caribbean Development Bank built a new platform uniting their client processes in a secure and modern way with Dynamics 365

As a multi-lateral financial institution, the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) is in charge of funding social and economic programs to reduce poverty and drive inclusive and sustainable growth in its Borrowing Member Countries (BMCs) across the Region. 

With a mandate that hinges on the judicious administration of financing, systems that facilitate transparent governance and regulation of resources are critical. Of equal importance are secure and accurate data systems providing up-to-the-minute information to allow the Bank to monitor all aspects of service delivery to its clients and the progress of initiatives being financed. 

In 2018, the Bank started a digital transformation initiative to optimize processes with technology and improve business performance. “The CDB wanted to move away from their legacy systems, so we replaced their existing loan management system with COREFIN, a Lending & Banking solution that consolidates the management of loans, grants, borrowing, and lines of credit, while operating entirely within Microsoft Cloud.”, says Diana Kovacheva, Project Manager and Product Owner at COREFIN.

Aligned with the Bank strategy, COREFIN facilitated an approach which used a full stack of Microsoft tools. As an add-on to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales, COREFIN Banking & Lending has native, secure integration with all the Microsoft tools and business apps. Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement is the core platform which holds everything together, with optimized processes through Power Automate and Power Pages, integrating with SharePoint and Power BI, thus linking together all business processes within the platform, and providing a single source of data for the Bank.

The power to plan forward

“It was a great approach because we were used to the capabilities of Azure, as our integration platform is built this way. The whole application’s life cycle management is made very easy by the solution, which improved the way we manage data in real time. There is also the traceability of flows and the security module on the Power Platform”, says Julio Cesar Gonçalves Lima, Chief Information Officer (CIO) at CDB.

Now, the Bank has a platform that has optimized processes, eliminated infrastructure costs, and facilitated integration among all their core systems, which enables automated data analysis in real time and has enhanced operations. “The whole spectrum of the Bank’s lending process was taken care of, and the migration was successful. We gained agility, consolidation of capabilities, and gained resilience, which is a major assessment factor for us”, he explains.

The CIO notes that a successful execution of the entire lending process is key to the Bank’s main goals: delivering strategic support to accelerate sustainable development programs being implemented by its BMCs. 

“We managed to optimize many of our critical processes by bringing them to the application and now we can even tap into data in real time, which is significant, as information flows easily for us, enabling better decision-making. The end-to-end is seamlessly integrated”, states Julio.

“In Dynamics 365, the Bank has real time information on their clients’ intake, the standard client relation manager, the lead intake, opportunities, all the way to funds being allocated and disbursed. If we look at licenses only, the cost savings are as much as 80%,” he adds. “As a whole, the process has brought numerous benefits, especially the capacity to plan ahead.”

Other advantages the CIO mentions are better portal engagement and broader visibility of processes. “Now that we have a better portal, there’s more visibility of the products’ pipeline. And since we also have a scalable solution, we can continue to iterate and implement additional solutions in the future”, he concludes