Banque Populaire Alsace Lorraine Champagne (BPALC) is a prominent regional bank in France, dedicated to providing comprehensive retail and business banking services. Known for its commitment to regional development and customer satisfaction, BPALC serves a diverse clientele with a focus on trust, innovation, and reliability.
Â
In System Downtime
New Lines of Code developed for enhanced features
Maintenance Cost Savings
For functional release of OBT, RTS and OGS
The Challenge
Banque Populaire Alsace Lorraine Champagne relied on a COBOL-based core banking system that was critical to daily operations, handling everything from customer transactions to compliance with banking regulations. However, BPALC faced mounting challenges as it sought to maintain efficient and secure services within an increasingly demanding financial landscape:
Aging Codebase with Stability and Maintenance Issues:
BPALC’s COBOL codebase, though robust, had not been fully updated in several years. This made it difficult to identify and resolve issues quickly, leading to periodic system instabilities and operational delays that impacted customer service.Regulatory Compliance and Security Demands:
The bank was under pressure to comply with new regulatory standards while ensuring that the system was fortified against security vulnerabilities. Without timely updates, the COBOL system faced risks of non-compliance, which could result in financial penalties and compromise customer trust.Feature Expansion and Customer Expectations:
As customers increasingly sought fast, digital banking options, BPALC needed to modernize its systems. However, the existing COBOL-based infrastructure made it difficult to introduce new features and keep pace with evolving customer expectations, limiting the bank’s ability to offer competitive services.
In response, BPALC turned to COBOLagency for a comprehensive solution. With extensive expertise in COBOL and legacy system optimization, COBOLagency was uniquely positioned to help BPALC address these challenges, ensuring both system reliability and long-term scalability.
What did
Tecnologia do
COBOLagency developed a structured, phased approach to optimize BPALC’s COBOL systems, enhance operational reliability, and ensure compliance with evolving industry standards. The following steps were taken:
Comprehensive Code Review and Issue Identification:
COBOLagency’s team began with a detailed review of BPALC’s entire COBOL codebase, identifying critical issues impacting system stability and performance. Through this review, COBOLagency pinpointed areas where code optimization could improve processing speed, reduce downtime, and enhance overall efficiency. This phase also helped map the updates necessary to align with the latest regulatory requirements.Issue Resolution and System Stabilization:
After identifying the key areas for improvement, COBOLagency worked closely with BPALC’s IT team to resolve these issues and stabilize the system. This included fixing underlying bugs and optimizing inefficient code segments to minimize downtime. By addressing these stability issues, COBOLagency ensured that the core banking system could perform consistently, meeting both operational and customer expectations.Developing and Implementing New Features:
Based on BPALC’s customer feedback and strategic goals, COBOLagency developed over 1,000 new lines of COBOL code to add requested features to the core banking system. These features included enhancements to transaction processing and improved reporting functionalities, providing BPALC’s customers with an improved banking experience.Regulatory Compliance Updates:
COBOLagency implemented necessary updates to ensure BPALC’s systems were in full compliance with current and emerging regulatory standards. This proactive approach to compliance minimized the risk of penalties and increased BPALC’s confidence in their ability to meet future regulatory changes.Preparation for Future Scalability:
COBOLagency restructured BPALC’s codebase to support scalable operations, enabling the bank to adapt to future growth and integrate additional services more easily. The team introduced tools for ongoing code review, testing, and monitoring, allowing BPALC to efficiently manage future updates and feature additions.
The Results
- Enhanced System Stability
- Improved Compliance and Security
- Reduced Downtime
- Faster Transaction Processing and Operational Efficiency
- Reduced Maintenance Costs and Resource Allocation