The rise of a specialist bank

Like many businesses, HTB was frustrated with relying on external resources, for technical developments on tasks which they didn’t deem to be particularly challenging.

Results were slower than they liked and often didn’t even match their business requirements. And the associated price tags were unreasonable.

They knew they could do it better themselves, and began searching for a way to utilise the knowledge within the business, without hiring an army of developers. They had the ideas of what they needed and how it should work. Low-code was the answer.

That’s where Liberty Create came in. Our low-code platform enabled HTB to form a small team who can now build the systems they need and manage process improvement.

With the introduction of low-code development, HTB has moved from being a user of a legacy core banking platform into building out their own capabilities. Despite their outstanding outcomes within year one, they still feel they could’ve gone faster. This is down to the confidence in their own abilities and in Liberty Create to achieve. Plus, all the supporting functions and departments need to have the ability to move at a similar pace.

With hindsight, we would come to the Create team at the start, explain our long-term ambitions. With their help, we’d probably be further along. But, it was well worth the exploration! The tech has grown with us. It’s been a very positive story for us.

David Patterson, Head of Solutions & Delivery.

The HTB Development Team is building a portfolio for the next year. Like any innovative business, they have more ideas than they have resources for. Reflecting their confidence in using low-code as a front end tool, they are considering using it for internet-facing services and a number of digital services to improve internal workflow and processes. A number of ‘microservices’ are also on their agenda.

They will utilise the workflow capabilities in a wider element across the bank to improve back-office efficiency, data governance, data quality and control. And all the while, also improving the operational efficiency of the bank. Create allows a deeper understanding of how long processes take and how they can be streamlined.

Such is their confidence in their front end building capabilities, HTB now approach new potential suppliers with a clear strategy that needs to work with low-code. By tailoring their own front end capabilities and utilising API services, they can pick the best out of the industry suppliers, using it to create USPs for themselves with their customers.

HTB started to notice that third parties they were engaged with, often commented that they were at the top end of technology maturity amongst their peers.

A core component of that is their use of Liberty Create low-code technology. It has honed their ability to develop things quickly, to change direction when needed and to react to an industry position or an operational challenge and deal with it.

Initially, we worked alongside the Netcall team, who started our delivery and then worked extremely well with us to handover to our small but very talented internal team. We’ve had very strong engagement with Netcall, from the CTO all the way down – we value this support and attention greatly. For us, it is amongst the highest criteria we look for in a supplier – and there are only a handful of suppliers where we genuinely feel we get that top level of support, plus the ability to feedback, request and input on Create product road mapping. We’ve really appreciated the agility of the Create team.

David Patterson, Head of Solutions & Delivery.