Financial Services Embrace Adobe Tools for Rich Internet Applications

by Darryl K. Taft

The PNC Financial Services Group used Adobe Flex Builder 3 to build a banking application that addressed the banking habits of Gen Y-ers who are more comfortable on Facebook and mobile phones than with old-school banking apps. The result was PNC’s Virtual Wallet, a service that provides banking customers intuitive and compelling online tools to track and manage all their banking activities. Virtual Wallet is an online and mobile application that includes online bill payment, a tiered savings account, wish list and calendar. To build on Virtual Wallet, PNC launched a YouTube channel for the application, along with Twitter and Facebook accounts where the company interacts with customers.

Bank Midwest streamlined customer service forms processes using Adobe LiveCycle ES. Now, bank employees use dynamic digital documents to initiate automatic processing of account changes, account openings, and other activities. So far, using Adobe LiveCycle ES has lowered the time required for reviewing and rechecking debit card application processes from 4,800 hours per year to 400 hours per year, selecting a card number and updating the entry log and system from 1,200 hours per year to none, scanning and indexing debit card applications from 6,500 hours per year to 60 hours per year, and correcting errors as a result of inadvertent data input from 2,060 hours per year to 40 hours per year.

KBC Securities, a European brokerage firm serving both institutional and private investors, used Adobe LiveCycle ES and the Adobe Flash Platform to improve its online investment platform for private investors, called Bolero. Customers have noted that the RIA (Rich Internet Application) system is faster and much more dynamic. By using LiveCycle, Bolero pulls information from KBC’s internal and external systems and instantly customizes and pushes it to users’ screens.

Germany’s DekaBank Luxembourg is using Adobe LiveCycle ES solutions to automate completion and processing of customer service forms for account opening and other activities. The bank also uses LiveCycle Barcoded Forms ES, where 2D barcode lines on PDF forms instantly capture data as it is entered into form fields. Once the form is filled in, the barcode on the printed PDF document can be scanned, with data captured automatically to backend systems. In addition to reducing costs, the bank has achieved 100 percent accuracy in data transfer with 2D barcodes on PDF forms.

Investment Cafe uses the Adobe Flash Platform and Adobe LiveCycle ES solutions to provide fund managers and investors with rapid, reliable and secure access to vital account information and services. For fund managers, the system greatly streamlines fund administration and accelerates the delivery of reports and quarterly statements to investors, eliminating the costs to print, collate and express ship thousands of investor documents every quarter. For investors, streamlined, online RIA dashboard access to their account provides them with critical information on demand. Within seconds, they can securely log in and view account activity in detail, generating monthly statements or investment reports as needed to review their portfolios. To date, the company has reduced costs of printing and delivering capital call statements by as much as $1 million, and has provided investors with secure access to critical account information, anytime and anywhere.

Thompson Reuters uses Adobe Connect, Captivate and Flash technology to capture product demos and overviews, using audio to provide context and add examples of the products’ use in real-world situations. eLearning specialists within the company produce training content in-house in a fraction of the time and cost incurred when the company outsourced development of the eLearning materials. To date, eLearning has accelerated by more than 50 percent, with improved eLearning quality, reduced development costs and enhanced support for product launches with timely training. In 2007, for example, Thompson Reuters employees worldwide completed nearly 70,000 eLearning modules.

NASDAQ leverages Adobe Flex and Adobe AIR to deliver a RIA on the desktop, which enables financial professionals to replay market activity in detail at any point in time. The dynamic application gives users instant insight into extremely detailed trading activity in the market at any time during the day. For example, users can query when a stock trade happened and replay the market events as if they were watching the market in real time. They can reconstruct the quotes at the time of the trades, move forward and backward to look for the timestamp mismatches, and zoom into the millisecond level to see quotes that lasted less than a millisecond. Users can also show the replay or screenshots to customers or regulators to verify compliance.

The Allianz Group, one of the world’s leading providers of insurance, banking, and asset management, uses Adobe Connect Web conferencing solutions to create and deliver eLearning content to employees and partners worldwide. So far, Connect has led to the reduction of costs for technical training by as much as 30 percent, an accelerated adoption rate by more than 200,000 employees and partners, and improved employee and partner training.

Dexia Sofaxis is France’s leading insurance broker for local authority and hospital staff. The organization used Adobe LiveCycle Rights Management to deploy a protection system for business documents to prevent information leaks and to protect intellectual property. Adobe LiveCycle Rights Management helps Dexia Sofaxis protect business documents as they move among internal teams and are shared with outside business partners. To date, Dexia Sofaxis has established greater control over business information, has helped safeguard sensitive business information, and has increased awareness among employees and outside partners about the need to protect intellectual property.