Development of Loan Origination Software for a Credit Management Software Vendor

About the Client

Collenda supplies digital products to their customer base of over 700 banks, corporate lenders, and debt collection agencies throughout Europe. The company’s main purpose is to help its clients conduct more efficient credit operations and improve the effectiveness of their collection efforts. Collenda was acquired by The Aryza Group in 2022.

Challenge

Due to the rising competitive pressure from FinTech startups and other financial companies, Collenda decided that it was time to ramp up their product digitalization, too. 

The company struggled to find local engineering talent and decided to try IT outsourcing instead. Edvantis was selected as the services provider from a number of contenders.

From March 2019, we had six Software Engineers on the project, working in two teams. Collenda commented that our professionalism and flexibility in resources scaling in the Capacity Service Model, were the decisive factors.

Main Goals

The primary objectives of initiating the collaboration with Edvantis were as follows:

• To upgrade the legacy web application and technology stack for improved usability  and performance 
• To roll out self-service portals for end customers applying for loans or debt restructuring 
• To switch to responsive, mobile-friendly web design technology to deliver a better user experience

Solution

Edvantis Engineers coordinated effectively with Collenda’s internal teams, so that the one-year timeline was met. Collenda relies on agile methodology, setting key sprint goals and providing user stories that our teams delivered on.

The smooth cooperation has already yielded significant results for Collenda. The joint team has executed:

• Front-end re-design for the credit management software suite, powered by React.js. 
• Lending portal re-architecture, using Spring Boot for the backend. 
• New loan application development using Javaserver Faces for component-based user interfaces. 
• Lending application porting to React.js to improve user satisfaction with the product. while preserving HTML/JSP component functionality to ensure smooth app performance. 
• A host of additional integrations with different systems.

One challenge our Software Engineers faced was the need to port Primefaces to React.js within the loan portal. We had to make major changes to the application backend, which resulted in significant performance improvements.

Additionally, we reduced code generation based on XML for the open credit solution. We found an elegant solution to preserve XML metadata, while ensuring that all the UI was built dynamically at runtime. This was possible thanks to Collenda’s engineering team insights and proactive knowledge sharing. 

Results

Edvantis teams are successfully co-creating new products with Collenda. Our Software Developers have fully integrated into the company’s operations and developed a deep knowledge of its core systems and portfolio products.

Together, we performed two major system updates and contributed to the release of the following innovative products:

• Open Credit 4.0 — an integrated credit management platform, featuring smart, AI-driven workflows, aimed at helping financial agents deliver more efficient, consistent, and personalized services. 
• A new lending portal, integrated with Open Credit 4.0. A user-friendly and intuitive cloud-based solution for loan applications and processing.

In addition, our team helped migrate extensive databases and source code from German to English to further improve product maintainability.