Moving SMIB’s loan disbursement from Excel to Temenos T24

Context

SysEnact Consulting implements Temenos T24 core banking for banks in Sri Lanka and Singapore. I spent six months on State Mortgage & Investment Bank’s (SMIB) loan system, working on-site at SMIB head office with the bank’s four loan officers and SysEnact’s business analysts.

The problem

A loan at SMIB passes through many hands before the money goes out: credit, legal, risk and approval officers, then pre-disbursement and disbursement. Before the T24 solution, the loan officers ran this in Excel. They collected forms, notes and details from the other officers, typed them into spreadsheets, and kept their own logs to track where each loan stood. Every hand-off was manual. That meant re-keying data, chasing information between people and having no single record of a loan’s status. Throughput depended on how quickly people could pass spreadsheets and paperwork along.

What I built

I replaced that manual stage with a pre-disbursement process inside T24:

• Screens (T24 Versions) for the pre-disbursement officer, with separate flows for mortgage and non-mortgage loans.
• Backend logic in Java on Temenos’s own packages. It validates each input, updates the relevant data tables and manages the loan’s state. When a loan moves from one stage to the next, the logic changes and adds the right values. It also adds or clears remarks depending on the state, so a returned file carries the reason with it.
• Enquiries that give each officer the loan information they need at their stage, limited to their access.
• I maintained these Versions and Enquiries as the process changed. I also wrote the Cashback Loan Advice report.

How I worked

I sat with the loan officers, watched how they actually handled a file, and turned their requests into T24 logic, with the business analysts agreeing scope. After go-live I fixed live issues raised by users, often the same day.

Result

Loan officers now work from one system instead of spreadsheets and paper hand-offs. I estimate the bank completed about 30% more loans per month afterwards, comparing monthly approvals under the manual Excel process with monthly approvals after the T24 solution went live.

What I learned

• On a live banking server a mistake matters. The skill is reporting an error fast and learning from it.
• The quickest route to the right fix is the person who uses the system.
• Interns are an investment. Respecting people’s time is how you earn their teaching.