Successful Cloud-Based API Implementation

Data Action (DA) is a specialist software and services provider to the alternate banking and financial services industry. Operating nationally with staff based in Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, DA services a broad client base including customer owned banks, credit unions, neobanks and financial services membership organisations.

Driven by customer demand, DA engaged Chamonix to provide an industry standard API implementation, replacing a legacy integration process and facilitating enhanced loan origination operations. The implementation was to be done by using a modern cloud environment.

Our team began with a Proof of Concept (POC) to establish feasibility of replacing the on-premise integration process functionality, to a modern cloud template that would allow restful APIs to communicate with the core banking platform. The POC consisted of two steps; firstly, to establish that a common industry standard payload (LIXI) would cover all the functions, identified as mandatory and that it could then be transformed whilst maintaining compatibility with the existing core banking interface. Secondly, these components needed to be migrated to a cloud provider.

Based on the success of the POC, Chamonix was engaged to undertake a full integration implementation for the creation and updating of loan applications, secure the services externally and utilising DA’s cloud to on-premise communication channels and subsequently work with a number of DA clients to test and prove the API’s functional, non-functional and security validation. This work was done in partnership with DA’s internal teams and interwoven with DA’s existing DevOps process, continuous integration to a cloud environment.

To date, we have successfully taken the common model/industry standard, made it restful and communicating functionally in back-end system. Through robust documentation of the solutions, the handover and subsequent capability uplift have helped to enable a smooth transition to BAU for DA.

As a result, the compatibility brought about by this project means that loan origination systems will no longer need to be extended to cater for custom legacy integrations, meaning ongoing integration is easier to seamlessly connect modern loan origination systems through the use of industry standards. The organisation is now opened up to enhancing the range of different options offered to their customers loan origination systems.

The successful implementation of this approach to migrate legacy integrations to secure and modern APIs in the cloud, has enabled DA to target a larger API transformation project, in which Chamonix is assisting.