RNHB

Competitive position and business performance of real estate financier RNHB improved by data

RNHB is the largest non-bank real estate financier in the Netherlands and is growing fast, both organically and through acquisitions. It has now entered a phase of consolidation of the organization, further professionalization and data management. For the latter, it was necessary to create order in data management and to modernize the data warehouse. The company did not want to do that all by itself, but relied on partners with expertise and implementation power, such as Valid.

Challenge: supporting growth

RNHB's stormy development also means that the number of data sources has grown significantly. The company extracts information from these, which it uses to anticipate changes in the market. Bringing the data household in order (and modernizing the data warehouse) was badly needed, because the existing warehouse was running on a single server. This was undesirable from a continuity point of view. This also stood in the way of innovation within RNHB's platform.

RNHB
Valid - real estate and housing
Solution: data warehouse in the cloud

After a thorough selection process, the choice fell on Valid Digital Business, for advice on and implementation of the project. "Valid came up with a good proposal," explains Jan van Poppel, RNHB's data specialist. "They are knowledgeable and their corporate culture fits well with ours: practical, results-oriented and fast."

Within a year and a half, the new data warehouse had been developed in the cloud and the data migrated, thanks to Azure Pipelines and Azure Data Factory. Data source after data source was connected, and application after application was delivered. Business processes were taken as the starting point. Van Poppel: "For example, to answer the question 'At what point in the approval process of an application does a lot of time take place?' The data warehouse provides insight that we can use to design our applications better, and to automate that process where possible."

Collaborative benefits: use of modern principles

Valid introduced modern principles of data management, modeling and data architecture, as well as the agile way of working, with data and scrum specialists. They were used to build the data warehouse and reports.

"It was a complex process. You shouldn't underestimate what it means to convert a legacy data warehouse," says Van Poppel. "It involves a lot of data from all kinds of sources. The staff also has to go along with the new way of working. Meanwhile, the business has to go on as usual. We worked together at the cutting edge. Valid did a good job and always took responsibility to achieve results."

"The data warehouse helps us find out where the business can achieve success."

Roland Currie IT director RNHB
Valid - consultation laptop
Valid - male, female
The result: streamlined and accelerated business processes

Roland Currie, IT Director at RNHB: "The data warehouse helps improve our processes, as well as our products and their development." RNHB also now has more opportunities to find out where the business can make improvements. "By analyzing repayment behavior, for example, you find parties who are repaying at an accelerated rate. You want to retain those customers and you can enable them to take on new real estate projects. But then you need to know which customers they are and what their portfolio looks like."

MS Dynamics is leading the way. Currie: "Previously, customer data were on a variety of systems. By centralizing this data in the CRM, data quality goes up significantly. Furthermore, we see that property information, such as value, is increasingly important for risk management. We focus on loan-to-value: linking the value of the collateral to the amount of the loan. Also important is data regarding the payment behavior of our customers," Currie explains.

Thus, the data warehouse not only supports day-to-day business, but is also a powerful innovation tool. RNHB and Valid have built an environment in which to experiment with data, including from external sources. "For example, to do analyses on energy labels of properties or on zip codes," says Van Poppel.

  • Streamlined and accelerated business processes.
  • Future-proof data warehouse in the cloud where data is consolidated, to which new data sources can be easily connected.
  • Higher data quality thanks to consolidation and centralization.
  • Thanks to the warehouse in the cloud, RNHB is able to adopt new technologies more quickly and thereby further innovate itself.
Future: building on base

The institute now has a secure foundation for the future, which can be gradually expanded to meet users' needs. By offering self-service capabilities, they are less dependent on the BI team.

RNHB
  • Created in 2008 from the merger of Rijnlandseand NederlandscheHypotheekbank
  • History goes back to 1890
  • Counts more than 150 real estate professionals
  • Provides loans from 50,000 to more than 100 million euros
  • Real estate portfolio 4 billion euros
Business benefits
  • The new data environment efficiently supports new business initiatives.
  • Changes in the business are quickly implemented in the data warehouse.
  • The improved information position, makes RNHB have keen insight into its own business processes and customer developments.
  • This enables the company to identify earning opportunities and realize efficiencies.
  • Thus, the process of approving investment applications has been significantly accelerated.
  • Better risk management ensures that RNHB enters into loans with reliable customers and can intervene in a timely manner in case of payment delays.
  • Demonstrating regulatory and governance compliance is greatly facilitated.