The financial services sector has been on a rapid path of digital transformation, focusing on innovation to support its internal systems, stakeholder interactions and customer experience. COVID-19 put even greater pressure on the sector to deliver world-class digital services to customers and partners.
Trustees Executors, New Zealand’s longest-serving trustee company, has partnered with MuleSoft in collaboration with Davanti to deliver new customer experiences and more efficient communications among employees, clients and stakeholders. With over 140 years of experience delivering trustee, fiduciary, and fund services, the business is focusing on adopting innovative solutions that unlock business potential and support accelerated growth.
Financial services pushing ahead
Financial service decision-makers are ahead of the curve in their ideas and plans for technology. MuleSoft’s IT and Business Alignment Barometer reveals that 93% of respondents believe automation and integration are critical for the future. Financial services also made the most progress in realizing their IT and business decision-making processes.
Financial services is the second-fastest-growing industry in New Zealand, and it has been the largest contributor to economic growth over the past 40 years. During COVID-19, the New Zealand financial sector took a people-centric approach, focusing on ensuring staff and customers are kept safe and well, products and services are changing to suit customers’ needs, and working collaboratively together to ensure the industry is well supported.
Preparing for growth
Trustees Executors started its digital transformation journey before the pandemic to transform from a legacy financial trust into a modern fintech. However, the company still succumbed to the same issues as the rest of the financial services industry, contending with overwhelming amounts of data sets with the raft of technology systems and applications.
It became clear that Trustees Executors would need to improve its data handling processes to deliver a better experience for its employees, partners, and customers and support the business before its potential IPO. Trustees Executors needed to improve its customer service while automating some of its processes and allowing customers to transfer data in real time.
Connecting business services
In collaboration with MuleSoft and business technology consultancy Davanti, Trustees Executors created the TE Connect Solution, a tool used to easily unlock and integrate the data and applications previously locked away in data silos. Trustees Executors’ customers can now securely share sensitive data in real time, removing the once time-consuming data exchange process while reassuring customers and key stakeholders that their data is safe.
TE Connect also powers a new, real-time, secure messaging platform for Trustee Executors customers, ensuring the business can safely and efficiently share sensitive financial data.
Unlocking the value of data
It’s not just the ability to collect but also to analyze data that gives that data its value. For example, customers need to view transactions from any device and understand what’s happened. The next step – where data comes into play – is the ability to choose based on that data, making these choices easier.
Trustees Executors can now easily integrate with siloed data and systems to create personalized experiences, which was impossible under its previous architecture. For example, MuleSoft enables Trustees Executors to create a seamless exchange of data across the business, paving the way for the launch of “Plug and Play your way” interactive capabilities for customers. Customers can now monitor transactions in real time from their devices, enabling them to know what’s happening, see how the market is performing, and see how their KiwiSaver is going.
Trustees Executors has come a long way in its 140 year history. Whereas the company was once responsible for securing gold bars in safes, Trustees Executors is now more akin to a modern financial services organization, trading its status as guardians of gold to custodians of data.
