Case Studies

Citiport Credit Co-operative Limited is a co-operative for the maritime industry, with a 4,000-strong membership from more than 11 companies. Citiport was founded in 1925 and continues to play an important role in providing members with credit facilities, saving schemes and other related activities. Formerly known as the PSA Credit Co-operative Limited serving PSA employees, it adopted its current name following the corporatisation of PSA in 1997.

Challenge

As a former PSA co-operative, Citiport used to tap PSA’s assistance in deducting from the employees’ salaries their monthly loan instalment payments. The consolidated amount was then credited into Citiport’s account.

In 2006, Citiport took over the collections, as PSA was no longer the only employer in the co-operative. The disbursement of loans, collection of monthly installments as well as payment of annual dividends were carried out manually and tracked in simple spreadsheets. With the twin goals of increasing efficiency and adding value to the co-operative, Ms Judy Koh, Financial Controller of Citiport, contacted DBS Bank for advice on harnessing the benefits of electronic banking.

Solution

Citiport’s business model, requirements and constraints such as limited IT resources and lack of experience in electronic banking, were taken into consideration by DBS and its business partner, Stone Forest IT. Their concern was not just to provide software but an end-to-end cash management system which could be easily implemented and used by Citiport.

The recommended solution was a combination of the market-leading Ideal Cash Management system from DBS and Stone Forest IT’s WorkEzy™ BankLink that integrates the spreadsheet function with Ideal. Citiport is now able to prepare collection/payment information in a simple 4-column spreadsheet and convert into DBS Ideal file format for processing.

Besides integrated software solutions, DBS and Stone Forest IT also provided IT support and various outsourcing services to help manage the Direct Debit Authorisation (DDA) application. Within just a few weeks, Citiport’s collection solution was successfully implemented.

Benefits

After the successful implementation of the collection solution, Citiport enjoys:

• 87% less manual collection
• Increased collection accuracy and reduced paperwork
• Quicker turnaround time
• Improved IT database management and support

Going forward, Citiport intends to carry out loan disbursements as well as annual dividend payouts via electronic banking. Citiport was pleased that the efficiency of its electronic GIRO collection had helped to pave the way for further e-banking as members were more willing to switch from cheque payment of dividends to electronic mode for next year’s annual dividend payouts.