Client story | De Goudse

Introduction

De Goudse is a Dutch insurance company founded in 1924. In time the company has grown and much has changed. Despite this growth, the company is still an independent family business and will continue to work with an entrepreneurial heart. De Goudse offers customers a wide range of financial products and insurance options such as non-life insurance, income insurance and life insurance. De Goudse have structured the organisation to respond quickly and decisively to developments in the various submarkets. In doing so, they focus more and more on solutions for entrepreneurs. In the international market, the company focuses on travel and expatriate insurance.

Challenge

Insurance companies have a lot of incoming and outgoing payments and a Payment Hub is essential for optimal streamlining. De Goudse faced the problem that their previous Payment Hub solution ceased to exist. This created the need for a replacement. The solution they sought was one enabling them to send payment and collection files from the various source administrations to various banks. On top of that, the company required the automatic retrieval of daily statement information from all accounts with various banks. Another important aspect of a Payment Hub was the automatic transfer of data to the various back-office systems.

Modern Payment Hub

Early in the selection process, ING Bank identified Cobase as a suitable partner. Cobase was still a young company at that time and as such was easily able to involve De Goudse in contributing to the development and incorporation of the requirements they were looking for. This combination of expertise and practical knowledge led to fruitful cooperation, creating a modern and futureproof solution with additional functionalities contrary to conventional solutions.

Mirjam states:

“We have supported Cobase in developing their product from an early stage in a co-creation model to define functionality but also including contracts and supporting processes. They understand the challenges we face in working with multiple banks, they listen to our needs and are very responsive when we come up with points for improvement or ideas for new features.”

The implementation and co-creation with Cobase led to a modern Payment Hub. Mirjam states:

“We now use Cobase as the only application for sending payment and collection files from the various source administrations to various banks. We also use Cobase for the automated retrieval of daily statement information from all accounts with various banks, after which this information is automatically transferred to the different systems.”

Mirjam adds that:

“Cobase is a platform that enables us to manually initiate payments. The Payment Hub links to the various back-office systems where all the reports from all the accounts are received and all payment files can be managed and sent to the different banks. Another advantage of Cobase is flexibility in terms of both payment formats and reporting formats.”

Efficiency Advantage

De Goudse has used the Cobase Payment Hub for several years and significant results have been achieved. The main results according to Mirjam are quoted as follows:

“With Cobase, we now have one application for the connection to multiple banks. On top of that, the bank balances of all banks are now easily visible. Not having to log in to several banking applications provides an efficiency advantage and user management now only needs to be carried out by one application.”

In terms of cost savings for De Goudse Mirjam states:

“The digital collection and processing of daily statements made the working method more efficient and paper bank statements have become redundant, saving us time and costs.”

On the use of the platform, Mirjam adds:

“The user interface is very intuitive. We did not need training to understand the functionality. In the few cases where we required their support, the Client Service team was available via telephone and happy to help.”

In the future, an upgrade to a Treasury System could also be an option for De Goudse.

"Cobase understands the challenges we face in working with multiple banks, they listen to our needs and are very responsive when we come up with points for improvement or ideas for new features.”

Mirjam Pols