Which customer is not going to pay their mortgage interest? And what is the impact if something changes in the world? Keeping up with a rush of change is an almost superhuman task for the department of Guido Hendrikx, Manager of Risk Modeling at Achmea Bank. Therefore, these days he leaves most of the modeling to the computer. Who learned the ropes in part thanks to Pipple’s expertise.

If there is one certainty in life, it is the mortgage that is paid off every month, most homeowners will think. A bank experiences that a little differently. Within a customer base, early repayment or non-payment is constantly occurring. Mortgage products change over time and so does the composition of the customer base and laws and regulations. Anticipating all these possible changes requires a host of models that must be constantly updated.

Automate

“With four people, we are quite a small department,” Hendrikx says. To structurally gain capacity, he turned to Pipple. He initially asked them to update a model. More assignments followed, each time succeeding in making processes more efficient. Pipples latest trick: at the push of a button, the model can be adapted to the latest insights. Achmea Bank’s total savings is many months a year of work. In addition, Hendrikx’s team now reports outcomes in a more consistent manner. And, last but not least, it allows them to calculate much more quickly to auditors and DNB how certain factors affect the model.

At the push of a button, the model can be adjusted to the latest insights. Achmea Bank’s total savings is many months a year of work.

Unsolicited training

Because Pipple saw that there was insufficient knowledge within the organization to get all they could from their own data and open source platforms (such as R), they took the initiative to train fifteen people from Achmea Bank in three mornings. An extra service Hendrikx had not counted on. ‘Extraordinary,’ he calls that gesture.

Open source

One of the things that makes Pipple so powerful, according to Hendrikx, is their clever use of open source solutions and the quality of the code. “All over the world, open source is building incredibly useful things, so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel yourself. But that requires two things: you have to know where to look in the mire of formulas and algorithms, and you have to understand the solutions you find there and tailor them to the customer’s specific issues. Pipple can do both, he believes.

That Pipple is adept at the latest techniques on the market, he says, is due to the firm’s excellent nose for the best mathematicians and econometricians. ‘It employs young people who are very driven to solve complex problems. Each of them is analytically super strong. Communicatively they are also good; they are just really nice people. Lars, ‘his’ Pipple consultant, has already been deployed on several assignments within Achmea Bank after completing his assignment with Hendrikx’s team. For example, he also helped implement a new model in the SAP environment. Hendrikx: ‘In every department where Lars was, he managed to convince with his knowledge and creativity. We have already extended his assignment three times.’