Building society Principality overhauls IT

Welsh building society Principality has used a major telecoms systems upgrade to better cope with an influx of new savers.

The building society completed a migration of its voice services, from a basket of contracts with BT to one with NTL Telewest Business, upgrading to IP networking in the process. The network is supported by a Cisco-based call routing system and new datacentre that together support communications to 70 branches and operational sites across Wales and a 1,200-seat call centre capability.

silicon.com Financial Services

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The IT upgrade started in the early part of 2007 and finished in mid-2008 with a level of investment of more than £1.3m for the first year.

Principality IT director John Williams said the building society was better able to cope with the high volumes of savings business enquiries in the second half of 2008.

He said: "In the last half of last year, we had a high volume of savings business as people lost confidence in the banks. We attracted a lot of savings customers and we were able to cope a lot better with that rise in volume as a result of the call centre migration."

Williams told silicon.com the contract was won by NTL Telewest Business through an e-auction set up on a platform run by Trading Partners. However he was also impressed by the fact the service provider had its own physical network infrastructure.

He said: "One of the things the new network has allowed us to consider is the use of presence technology. It means an operator will be able to get an instant decision for a potential mortgage customer because they know an underwriter is available in headquarters to make that approval."