Banking portals have become a fundamental aspect of the retail banking sector, contributing significantly to the cost of doing business. Due to their widespread use, the standards for customer experience are exceptionally high. To remain competitive, banks must meet their customers where they are, which increasingly means offering banking services online with the same convenience as in-person interactions.

Washington Federal Bank, commonly known as WaFd Bank, is a US-based retail and commercial bank operating over 200 branches from Washington state to Texas. Leveraging the Mendix development platform, WaFd completely overhauled their online banking portal, gaining full control over their customers’ digital experience.

Embracing Digital-First Banking

Dustin Hubbard, CTO at WaFd Bank, was tasked with transitioning the bank to a digital-first model. His team needed a rapid development solution to create enterprise-grade, public-facing web portals for their customers. Using low-code, Hubbard and his team managed to rebuild their online banking portal in just ten months. This new portal allows customers to view account information and transactions, initiate bank transfers, and pay bills.

Choosing the Right Platform

Hubbard acknowledged the challenge of starting from scratch without an existing infrastructure or toolset. Additionally, the solution needed to integrate seamlessly with their extensive middle-tier API gateway. To ensure the chosen platform could meet their needs, Hubbard and his team put Mendix through a rigorous proof-of-concept process, which it passed successfully. This proof of concept needed to support various functions, including:

• Enrolling in online banking
• Accessing all account and transaction details
• Supporting internal and external bank transfers
• Managing bill payments with a checking account

Within the first six weeks of using low-code, the WaFd team surpassed what their previous vendor had attempted to achieve in eight months. Hubbard praised the Mendix platform, stating, “The ability for the Mendix platform to solve such a challenging build as our first application is remarkable. The platform held up to the promise. We are impressed at how fast you can prototype.”

The new banking portal offers WaFd’s customers personalized experiences based on their identity and behavior, providing functionality that white-label solutions could not deliver. Hubbard’s team has created a top-tier product, and thanks to the low-code platform, they can quickly respond to customer demands by rolling out new features every eight weeks.

Redefining Online Banking

As Hubbard describes, WaFd is “redefining the online banking experience for our clients.” Equally important, WaFd now has much deeper insights into how customers use and interact with their products. In addition to gaining full control over their banking portal experience with Mendix, WaFd sought a platform that would not overburden their limited resources. Deployment and operations can be time-consuming, so the team needed a cloud-native platform that could easily scale as needed.

Future Prospects

Hubbard and his team plan to extend their online portal to build native mobile apps. Since Mendix is the only low-code platform that supports React Native, they are well-positioned to offer new, best-in-class experiences to their customers. Hubbard envisions skilling up the business and creating citizen developers within the organization to accelerate feature development.

Mendix provides Hubbard and his team with new opportunities to build solutions that enhance customer experiences. The new online banking portal is just the beginning of their low-code journey. “Mendix isn’t just about online banking portals. [WaFd] will be using the platform to build out applications across our business… One is to deliver an internal tool for our call center to manage customer accounts. We are confident the platform can support anything we come up with.”

Hubbard’s ambition to transform WaFd into a digital-first bank is being realized through the latest in application development technology, ensuring a future-proof platform for this project and beyond.

Photo by CardMapr.nl (unsplash.com)