Emric platform underpins SEB Leasing

It may sound a bit odd, but Sweden’s major banks are among the top corporate spenders every year. SEB, for example, spends about SEK 10 billion on goods every year. But what do they do with everything they buy?

– In practice, we don’t get to see anything of what we buy here at SEB – the goods are rented out through a lease or hire-purchase agreement and delivered directly to the customer. We’re not the one making the decision to buy, says Kjell Lindqvist, Senior Advisor at SEB in the department handling the leasing-systems. Whilst the customer of course makes the decision, we are always the ultimate legal owner.

In order to reach 10 billion worth of purchases each year, SEB needs a lot of customers who are willing to spend.

– We manage about 100 000 contracts and perhaps 60 000 -70 000 customers in our leasing portfolio, says Kjell Lindqvist, and that includes the entire range of products that we have bought on behalf of our customers, from major German power plants through to cars. Although, it must be said that we are increasingly focusing on big-ticket items and are reducing the number of smaller contracts in the portfolio.

In short, Emric’s role is to provide the platform which produces the leasing product which SEB then sells to its customers. The platform is called cLA and can be described as a hub or base-system for the administration of hire-purchase, leasing and overdraft facilities. SEB gets flexible and simple administration and continuous analysis of its customer base.

– I might add that we still manage leasing sales and the credit process in our own system.

But Emric also has credit-rating products so who knows, says Kjell Lindqvist. When credit rating is complete and the lease agreement is ready, everything is transferred to cLA which we run on our own machines using our own personnel.

– Today, we benefit from Emric’s cutting-edge
competence which is constantly updated. The Windows platform is forever changing so when Microsoft comes up with something new, Emric makes sure that cLA is updated accordingly.

The reliance of SEB’s leasing products on Emric’s platform dates back to the SEB and Trygg Hansa merger at the end of the 90’s. With two systems from each world, it became necessary to modernize, rationalize and find a shared system. The decision to choose cLA is one that Kjell Lindqvist does not regret.

– In hindsight, it has worked really well. We have very good uptime, cLA is operationally stable and is developed on an on-going basis together with Emric, says Kjell Lindqvist. We also run the system with other currencies on markets such as Norway, Finland and Poland without any problems.

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