The agreement, part of EBS’ IT upgrade strategy, is to enhance its business flexibility by implementing a Service Orientated Architecture (SOA) which will enable the company to connect seamlessly online with thousands of mortgage brokers in Ireland.
EBS is a building society which operates on cooperative mutual principles. It has been providing home loans to its members since 1935 and today commands in excess of a 10 per cent share of the €26 billion Irish home loan market.
Historically, EBS has traditionally only operated through its proprietary network of branches and franchise agents. However, having seen the recent trends in the market for customers to source mortgages through mortgage brokers, EBS knew that it needed to become a front runner in communicating seamlessly with these brokers to secure new mortgage customers. For this EBS needed an on demand IT channel to reach the broker community. After speaking with IBM’s Global Business Services consultants, EBS Building Society chose an SOA for its scalability and flexibility it integrate disparate IT systems.
