New transactional service for our client NN Investment Partners
NN Investment Partners
Higher quality in Investment Fund Company
28 Nov 2022
NN Investment Partners is one of the leading investment fund companies in Poland. In the spring this year the company joined the global Goldman Sachs Asset Management group.
The cooperation of e-point SA with NN investment Partners TFI to date has produced two successful projects: a corporate portal and a digital onboarding system for the company's clients. During this period we also managed to build mutual trust and understanding, which took us to our next joint venture - an investment fund platform - NNTFI24.pl.
Digital brand experience at every stage of the customer journey
The platform project is a culmination of the next stage of the digital transformation of NN Investment Partners TFI. Consequently, the entire customer journey, from building engagement (the portal), through the first transaction and onboarding, up to self-service, can be fully digitally supported.
The new platform, contrary to traditional channels, offers a highly user-friendly experience - users can analyse and buy funds on their own. Users can also easily establish individual IKE and IKZE pension fund accounts and build their own pension plans. The platform's starting point is the navigation pulpit which can state the investment portfolio balance and allows for the investment analysis.
E-commerce with Investment Fund Company specifics
The NNTFI24.pl platform project was inspired by e-commerce services. The greatest challenge we faced was to effectively combine intuitive ways of acquiring funds with the realities of a highly regulated financial industry.
Key platform functions involve:
Dashboard - a navigation pulpit with investment statuses of particular products, divided into investments/the pension and statistics along with the client portfolio analysis;
Client process service — giving remote instructions of acquisitions, conversions, etc.;
Processes of establishing new products — based on IKE/IKZE - including the processes of transferring products from other financial institutions and performing an immediate multi-step authorisation;
Displaying transaction history;
Transparent presentation of listings;
Help Centre.
Mobile first, intuitiveness and security to match banking systems
Today's investors are mobile. Thus, the system implementation required customisation both in terms of UX/UI and in the technological dimension.
Technology-wise we used a front-end designed based on the React.js framework. From the point of view of mobile users, advantages of this technology can be seen in the speed of loading particular system screens and in the support it offers to various functions which native mobile application users are familiar with.
The new service is more intuitive and simple to handle. It guides clients step by step and keeps them informed about the result of choosing each of the options.
In order to ensure system security, we have applied the most advanced technologies available on the market (oauth2, secure cookies, security through obscurity, logs anonymization, end to end encryption, secure virtual private network, web application firewall, ddos/dos prevention).
Project challenges
In projects with such degree of complexity there is no avoiding challenges. In this case the most difficult task was to define how particular platform elements were supposed to work to match the level of complexity of such differentiated products as investments.
"Throughout the entire project period we collaborated closely with our client discussing all necessary details of the system, such as a high number of discrepancies identified in each process. To look at just one of them - the process of redeeming each product is regulated by a separate law, so the system must account for each of them".
Łukasz Krukowski
Principal Architect
e-point S.A.
Microservices, integrations and Transfer Agent API project
The platform could not be implemented if not for a close cooperation with the business sector, analysis of the investment product structure, process review in the existing system and collaboration with the so called transfer agent, the body handling fund registers.
In order to use the platform functions it was necessary to design an API communicating with the Transfer Agent's backend and integrated with the:
- identity verification system,
- communication platform (SMS gateway).
NN Investment Partners TFI wanted the application to be highly accessible with no perceivable service breaks. Thus, we based the architecture on microservices which are able to offer better accessibility to end users, for example through imperceptible updates. Microservices allow to chunk applications into smaller and independent components which can communicate with one another. A temporary inaccessibility of one microservice does not cause a breakdown of the entire application as is the case with monolithic applications. Microservices may be also started up independently of each other. Thanks to this, an SMS gateway integration update can be completed without any need to tweak individual elements.
7 engineers, 16 months, 24 sprints and agile responses to challenges
On the side of e-point SA the project was implemented by an interdisciplinary technical team including a: System Architect, Scrum Master, two Java Developers, Senior FrontEnd Developer, Tester, Architect and Analyst. As the team composition fully covered the necessary competences, our team was able to take full accountability for the venture and become our client's partner in the digital transformation.
We worked in two-week sprints using a Scrum methodology. It allowed us to stay highly agile while addressing the project challenges, such as:
- necessity to adjust the application to legislative changes appearing during sprints and affecting previous arrangements,
- introducing and adding high-risk countries,
- adjusting text-message communication to users,
- synchronising and changing our priorities in the cooperation with the Transfer Agent.
"We have a very favourable opinion on our collaboration with e-point SA and the entire service implementation. Our partner showed a great deal of flexibility and a speedy response to our changing expectations and regulations, which is of paramount importance in this industry".
Miłosz Pałka
Digital Product Manager
NN Investment Partners TFI S.A.
Technology stack
- React - frontend;
- OpenShift - container management;
- Docker - containerisation;
- Artemis - queuing system;
- PostgreSQL - data base engine;
- Java 17 / OpenJDK 17 - software environment;
- Spring Cloud Gateway - a proxy service between the frontend and microservices.
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