BANK FRICK & CO. AG

Industry

finance

Department

Management, controlling, finance, front office/customer care, payment, IT, human resources

Region

Balzers, Liechtenstein

The customer

Bank Frick is a family-owned Liechtenstein bank with headquarters in Balzers and a branch in London. Strategically, Bank Frick focuses on services and products for financial intermediaries such as fiduciaries, asset managers, payment service providers, fund promoters and fintechs. Bank Frick's unique selling points include its high level of expertise in regulated blockchain banking. The bank accompanies ICO, custodies crypto assets, trades leading cryptocurrencies for Bank Frick clients and makes crypto assets "bankable". For intermediaries, Bank Frick develops tailor-made funds and acts as a custodian (depository bank).

Bank Frick is the only Liechtenstein bank to hold Visa and MasterCard acquiring licenses. More than 120 employees work for the bank.

Initial situation

Diversification is a crucial aspect for Bank Frick in order to operate successfully in the market. Accordingly, it is important for the financial institution to recognize potential and implement it in innovative products. Since the first quarter of 2018, for example, account holders at Bank Frick have been able to invest directly in leading cryptocurrencies to diversify their portfolio. Equally crucial for the bank is a high level of transparency regarding information on products, business areas, customers and employees in order to successfully manage its business. "Since we not only offer standard products from classic banking, but also innovative blockchain banking products, for example, we were looking for software that would offer us the greatest possible flexibility in terms of application development and integration of various data sources," explains Kevin Marxer, Business Intelligence and Application Engineer at Bank Frick.

Previously, analyses were mapped using a query solution that only accessed the Db2-based core banking system. However, this methodology did not provide connectivity to other platforms. In addition, the visual display options were limited.

The goal of introducing BI software was to provide management with a data cockpit that would enable metrics-based management of the bank. In addition, front-line staff should be provided with information on customers and products.

Solution

The financial institution opted for the Qlik analysis and reporting solution. The decisive factors were the ability to combine any data sources, the user-friendliness and the graphical display options. The price-performance ratio was also convincing.

Within two weeks, the software was implemented and the first application was ready for productive use. The Liechtenstein-based ppmc AG was responsible for the rapid success of the project. The IT service provider specializes in customer-specific business intelligence solutions for medium-sized companies. The focus is on the development of Qlik-based analysis and reporting applications.

ppmc is not only convincing with its technical expertise and many years of project experience - the physical proximity and the associated "short distances" were also very important to the bank. "The perceptiveness of the ppmc employees is very high, as is the speed of response to our inquiries," adds Marxer.

Areas of application and benefits

At Bank Frick, Qlik applications are used by around 45 employees from management as well as the controlling, finance, customer service, payment, IT and HR departments. A data volume of 7.5 GB is evaluated. The data originates from the core banking system and other internal and external systems. The data is provided on a daily basis. Transaction data is loaded every half hour.

The management uses Qlik for the compressed supply of information with various key figures such as revenue analyses, assets under management, net new money, etc. The management also uses Qlik for classical controlling reports.

Classic controlling reports are also mapped in Qlik.

The employees responsible for customer care use the software for a clear and comprehensible presentation of customer relationships.

Furthermore, an application for personnel controlling is available, which contains data on the number of employees, job percentages, and the number of departures and arrivals, among other things.

By using Qlik, Bank Frick benefits from a time saving of around 30 percent for the provision of key figures and analyses. The financial institution also benefits from faster information availability, higher data timeliness and more analysis flexibility. "Thanks to the ability to connect any data source, we can now implement more decision-relevant analyses," explains Marxer. "In addition, the data is up to date at least on a daily basis. In the past, printed reports were ready in the morning; today, users can meet their individual information needs at any time with structured and comprehensibly visualized data."

Future

The Qlik application landscape is being further expanded - currently, enhancements to the management cockpit are being implemented as well as reports for customers with information on their banking relationship. "Due to the high user-friendliness of Qlik, we are able to further develop applications internally for the most part. "On a selective basis, ppmc supports us," Marxer concludes. In the medium term, the bank plans to migrate to Qlik Sense.