Mike Walker's Blog

New Financial Components Released for Insurance and Capital Markets

   

 

Claims Processing Reference Architecture

Claims Processing Reference Architecture provides quality services in the field of Auto Insurance Claims Processing however these components can be leveraged for other forms of claims processing such as: Home, Medical, Mortgage, and other general claims processing services to work on behalf of clients for better advanced services. Today, global insurance industry is facing a challenge to provide cutting edge services and value added customer experience coupled with faster response time and easily adaptable services. Like with the other Financial Services architectures released, this reference architecture leverages the ACORD standard throughout. This insurance interoperability with both Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) and custom built applications in your enterprise.

 

Shown above is the flow and business process demonstrated in the reference architecture. There are multiple personas involved from third parties, agents and internal personal such as various underwriters.

All of this workflow is managed from Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and uses various technologies to implement.

Demo

 

Get the code and the binary installers: Claims Processing Reference Architecture

 

Capital Markets Structured Product Creation

This reference architecture addresses the space of structured product creation.  This is unique and complex process in capital markets. This is due largely to non standardization and isn't often like anything the bank is already trading. This presents a problem in that these types of deals are unlikely to be captured in a core trading system immediately.

Below is an illustration of the process captured from the creation of the product to selling and finally managing that product.

Demo

 

Get the code and the binary installers: Capital Markets Reference Architecture

 

Refreshed Installers Available

1. Broker Commissions Reference Architecture
2. Loan Origination Reference Architecture
3. Online Banking Reference Architecture

 

Get the code and the binary installers: Claims Processing Reference Architecture

 

Capital Markets Structured Product Creation

This reference architecture addresses the space of structured product creation.  This is unique and complex process in capital markets. This is due largely to non standardization and isn't often like anything the bank is already trading. This presents a problem in that these types of deals are unlikely to be captured in a core trading system immediately.

Below is an illustration of the process captured from the creation of the product to selling and finally managing that product.

Demo

 

Get the code and the binary installers: Capital Markets Reference Architecture

 

Refreshed Installers Available

1. Broker Commissions Reference Architecture
2. Loan Origination Reference Architecture
3. Online Banking Reference Architecture

 

Get the code and the binary installers: Claims Processing Reference Architecture

 

Capital Markets Structured Product Creation

This reference architecture addresses the space of structured product creation.  This is unique and complex process in capital markets. This is due largely to non standardization and isn't often like anything the bank is already trading. This presents a problem in that these types of deals are unlikely to be captured in a core trading system immediately.

Below is an illustration of the process captured from the creation of the product to selling and finally managing that product.

Demo

 

Get the code and the binary installers: Capital Markets Reference Architecture

 

Refreshed Installers Available

1. Broker Commissions Reference Architecture
2. Loan Origination Reference Architecture
3. Online Banking Reference Architecture

 

Get the code and the binary installers: Claims Processing Reference Architecture

 

Capital Markets Structured Product Creation

This reference architecture addresses the space of structured product creation.  This is unique and complex process in capital markets. This is due largely to non standardization and isn't often like anything the bank is already trading. This presents a problem in that these types of deals are unlikely to be captured in a core trading system immediately.

Below is an illustration of the process captured from the creation of the product to selling and finally managing that product.

Demo

 

Get the code and the binary installers: Capital Markets Reference Architecture

 

Refreshed Installers Available

1. Broker Commissions Reference Architecture
2. Loan Origination Reference Architecture
3. Online Banking Reference Architecture

Updates to the Financial Services Component Library

Hello everyone! More news on the Financial Services Component Library front.  I have developed a series of videos that give a solution overview. These are helpful for those that want to see these components in action before downloading.

There have also been updates to the source code and the MSI installers.

Links

See below for links to the projects:

• ACORD Software Factory (insurance messaging framework)
• Broker Commissions Reference Architecture
• Capital Markets
• Claims
• Insurance Rating
• Life Insurance Reference Architecture
• Loan Origination Reference Architecture
• Online Banking Reference Architecture

Videos

Videos of the components have been uploaded as well:

Broker Commissions

Video: Broker Commissions Reference Architecture

Life Insurance

Video: Life Insurance Reference Architecture

Online Banking

Video: Online Banking Reference Architecture

Life Insurance

Video: Life Insurance Reference Architecture

Online Banking

Video: Online Banking Reference Architecture

Life Insurance

Video: Life Insurance Reference Architecture

Online Banking

Video: Online Banking Reference Architecture

Life Insurance

Video: Life Insurance Reference Architecture

Online Banking

Video: Online Banking Reference Architecture

Presentation: Changing the Face of Banking Development

It's amazing how many e-mails I have received so far about sharing my presentation. So instead of sending to a few people I would like to share it with all of you. Keep in mind that with any presentation the deck is just a tool for communicating, I usually talk to a slide and not really follow bullet point. Also, with the publishing process the demos can't be seen, some of the animations broke and there is no voice over. This should give you a better feel for the presentation though.

| View | Upload your own

Partner talks about the business impact of OBA

Dataract CEO Craig van Zeyl discusses how SharePoint has impacted his company. Craig alludes to how his company had made a fundamental change in their technology platform to completely retool on the SharePoint architecture. He also discusses our collaboration and his adoption of Financial Services Component Library in there product offerings.

Video: Dataract adoption of Financial Services Component Library

Check it out!

Check it out!

Check it out!

Financial Services Component Library Downloads

You may of seen my post announcing the Financial Services OBA Component Library. If you did you were most likely wondering when and where the code was going to be released. Due to a small issue on the code publishing side these were a little delayed. But don't fret, we have them uploaded now on CodePlex:

• Broker Commissions Reference Architecture
• Life Insurance Reference Architecture
• Loan Origination Reference Architecture
• Online Banking Reference Architecture

You will find several materials on the site including:

• Source Code
• Binaries Installers
• Installer Help Files

If you at the Financial Services Developer conference in New York we will be showing these architectures.

More coming reference architecture coming shortly!

Loan Origination Reference Architecture Version 2

I announced at the Office Developers Conference 2008 the release of the Loan Origination Reference Architecture version 2. Like the previous version, this reference architecture shows architects and developers how to bridge OBA technologies with transactional service oriented systems such as BizTalk.

The Loan Origination Reference Architecture shows how to build architectures that unify people, process and technology through familiar Office 2007 user interfaces. It includes an architecture framework for lending with an Office Business Application based scenario and BizTalk “MISMO” Accelerator for the loan origination process in banking. OBAs are an emerging class of business applications that connect existing line-of-business (LOB) systems with the people that use them every day through the familiar user interface of Microsoft Office, bridging the gap between how business process systems work, and how people work. OR-LOS will help customers simplify document management, increase integrated workflow, improve efficiency and ultimately lower time-to-market offering for faster turn-around and reduced cost.

Solutions that leverage the OR-LOS have the following benefits:

• Empowers Business Users to make informed lending decisions
• Using familiar Office tools for common business tasks (e.g., Outlook or Excel)
• Provided with a extensible lending platform that will reduce the development cycle
• Lending technology consolidation strategies can be derived
• Interoperable Lending Platform through BizTalk MISMO Accelerator
• Rich collaboration platform

 

Summary of Additions

• New Instant Messaging OCS Integration for Broker and Loan Processor collaboration
• A new set of five Excel based Mortgage Calculators
• More Content Management
• Real-World Patterns for ECM
• 2 New Business Intelligence Reports
• New 1003 FannieMae v.3.2 based InfoPath form
• InfoPath Quick Registration Enhancements including:
• Enhance Look and Feel
• Surfacing Workflow Steps
• MLS Integration using the RETS standard for an S+S example.
• Add Data Elements to conform to the industry standard 1003 Form
• New OpenXML Document Generation of Loan Documents Includes an example of generation of the Good Faith Estimate

 

Last month Gartner releases whitepaper entitled “Banks Must Redesign Their Lending Architecture”. The guidance is very similar to the guidance in the Loan Origination Reference Architecture.

Be sure to check it out.

 

 

 

 

 

Links for downloads of the source code will be made available soon.

Financial Services OBA Component Library

At the Office Developers Conference this week I announced the release of the Financial Services OBA Component Library. The Financial Services OBA Component Library is a comprehensive set of OBA components that span across key areas in the Banking, Insurance and Capital Markets industries. The components are built in a composite way. This enables customers to assemble OBA components into existing or new business processes.

There are three things you need to know about the Financial Services OBA Component Library:

• First, these components are built as composite OBA components. This makes these components composable in a mash-ups fashion. Since the components are driven by industry scenarios they address discrete areas of functionality in financial services business processes.
  • An example of this is a web part that is a 360 portfolio view of a insurance customer(shown in the screenshot above). Since this component is built in a composite manner, this component can be exposed across many different technology implementations (thick or thin client) OR business implementations (can be used in various other scenarios using the component as is but changing the systems it integrates to).  The Silverlight component is exposed as a web part in MOSS, the information is retrieved from the Business Data Catalog and the process is enabled by WF.
• Second, these components fit into an end to end set of business capabilities and processes. The Loan Origination Reference Architecture is a result of mashing-up a set of components that demonstrates not only the value of OBA but how OBAs can transform the business process.
• Third, components are all built on industry standards which makes these interoperable not only at the protocol level but at the business process level. These components break down the classic interoperability barriers. OBAs show customers new integration patterns and new uses of LOB information.

What are the scenarios?

Banking

• Lending Reference Architecture
• Online Banking
• Broker Commissions

Insurance

• Insurance Claims Processing (Coming in March)
• Insurance Channel Sales (Coming in March)
• Life and Annuity Components

Capital Markets (Coming in March)

• Create Structured Products Scenario
• Excel OpenXML

 

The library will include approximately 90+ OBA Components for Financial Services. Below is a list of the technology components that comprises the component library.

      

What is included?

1. Site Templates
2. Master Pages
3. Silverlight Components
4. Web Parts
   1. BDC Web Parts
   2. Extending Enterprise Content Management Web Parts
5. Industry Standards based Infopath Forms
6. Document Generation Framework
7. Custom XML based OpenXML Documents (Excel/Word)
8. State Machine WF Workflows
9. Series of standards based integration BDC Entities
10. WS-* enabled ACORD Web Services Messages
11. Office Communications Server Components

 

Over the coming months you will see more content and additional Financial Services scenarios. Keep an eye out for these additional materials:

1. MSDN Articles and Architecture Guidance
2. Source code will be provided for free
3. How To Articles
4. Scenario based Hands On Labs
5. MSDN Virtual Lab
6. Content can be found on:
   1. Microsoft Connect - http://connect.microsoft.com
   2. Financial Services Architecture Center - http://msdn.microsoft.com/FinServArch
   3. My Blog (of course) - http://blogs.msdn.com/MikeWalker

When will it be released?

We will be rolling out guidance, source code and installable packages over the coming weeks. Keep an eye out on the MSDN Financial Services Architecture Portal.  

Microsoft Lending Reference Architecture V-Lab Released

I am very excited to announce that we have finally released the Virtual Lab for The Microsoft Lending Reference Architecture Version 1. I have heard from you load an clear over the past few months! We now have an Virtual Machine in the "Cloud" ready for you to examine workflows, dive into code or just play with the scenario.

Virtual Lab Start Page

 

Keep an eye out for future releases of the Lending Reference Architecture as we have been heads down on version 2.0 with a ton of huge additions. Version 2 will be released in the same style as with version one which will include whitepapers, source code and source code.

A compile of version 1 Lending Reference Architecture materials include:

Whitepapers

Developing the Lending Reference Architecture

Building Sustainable Banking Architectures

Architecting Regulatory Compliant Architectures

Architecting Enterprise Loan Workflows and Orchestrations

 

Blog Posts

Extending the Lending Reference Architecture: http://blogs.msdn.com/mikewalker/archive/2007/04/11/extending-the-or-los-lending-framework.aspx

Windows Mobile Appraiser Solution Scenario: http://blogs.msdn.com/mikewalker/archive/2007/04/02/using-windows-mobile-with-or-los.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/mikewalker/archive/2007/03/30/obas-deliver-soa-to-the-people.aspx

The Lending Message Bus Gets Along with all Standards: http://blogs.msdn.com/mikewalker/archive/2007/04/10/the-microsoft-lending-message-bus.aspx

Unstructured Data, The Achilles Heel of SOA: http://blogs.msdn.com/mikewalker/archive/2007/04/23/unstructured-data-the-achilles-heel-of-soa.aspx

Using the Lending Reference Architecture for Commercial Lending: http://blogs.msdn.com/mikewalker/archive/2007/04/11/or-los-and-commercial-lending.aspx

OBA's deliver SOA to the People: http://blogs.msdn.com/mikewalker/archive/2007/03/30/obas-deliver-soa-to-the-people.aspx

Choosing a Loan Message Standard for Banking: http://blogs.msdn.com/mikewalker/archive/2007/01/17/choosing-a-loan-message-exchange-standard-for-banking.aspx

Web Casts

Lending webcast: http://blogs.msdn.com/mikewalker/archive/2007/04/10/2007-office-system-the-next-business-platform.aspx

Document Generation: http://blogs.msdn.com/mikewalker/archive/2007/04/11/or-los-and-commercial-lending.aspx

Books

Office Business Applications: Building Composite Applications with Microsoft Technologies

Conferences

These are conferences where we talked about the Lending Reference Architecture

Worldwide OBA Architecture Forum

My Presentation Done Completely in Post-It Notes

Strategic Architecture Forum - Canada

My EA and OBA Sessions at TechEd 2007

 

Partners

We have a lot of great partners that have used either the bits or have used the Microsoft Guidance to influence the future direction of their architectures. One in particular is a gold partner in Australia called Dataract. See my post:

http://blogs.msdn.com/mikewalker/archive/2007/08/20/new-financial-services-oba.aspx

Updated: Bank Teller Composite Architecture

This release adds support for ribbons, form-skinning, various CommandAdapters and UIElements are also added, some of which extend CAB as well as offer basic support for DevExpress controls.

The BankTeller QuickStart application has also been updated to incorporate samples of the new XtraWindowWorkspace and DxMenuItemCommandAdapter.

• Other changes of note:
• The file structure of the release has been reorganized so that things are slightly easier to find and consistent
• The project has been renamed from DevExpress.CompositeUI to CABDevExpress.ExtensionKit (to avoid conflicts with DevExpress' Project Converter tool)
• The base namespace has changed from DevExpress.CompositeUI to CABDevExpress (this will break existing code but is copy/paste job to fix)
  CAB dlls are now included as part of the release to allow for easier download-and-compile
• The code has been cleaned up to some extent, to remove unused includes, unused variables and other anomolies

 

http://www.codeplex.com/CABDevExpress/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=6655

 

Tags: Banking Composite Applications

TechEd Australia Wrap-up

First thanks to everyone whom came to my sessions at TechEd. Other thanks goes out to folks in the blogosphere talking about the session. The first session was standing room only! I have two more on the same topics in New Zealand.

In the presentations I talked a lot about the separation of human and system workflow and demonstrating that MOSS is a great platform for exposing Service Oriented Architectures.

From an architecture perspective I talked about how OBAs are really composite applications. Below you will find the "Formula for Composite Architectures" you'll see OBA in the middle.

I received some great feedback and questions on my OBA talk. Here are some of the questions that were asked:

What if we can not invest in MOSS right away, can we still build OBAs? Yes, you can leverage WSS services, build ribbons and task panes. However, it will be limiting compared to building off of the MOSS platform. Additionally, OBAs are not just Office 2007 clients either. You can build OBAs from Office 2003 version assets. You will quickly find out there that there is a strong business case to move to the new version.

Can OBAs help with Configuration Management? This was an interesting question. OBAs in and of themselves can't help with configuration management. However that is like contrasting database technology with that subject. The answer is YES you can build them and YES you can buy them. If you want to buy a  solution rather than build it you can check out: http://www.enterpriseinformatics.com/sharepoint.shtml. They specialize in this area. They have a great picture that describes how they complement our product.

 

What is the long term plans for OBA? If I build one today will something new come along and obsolete it? Well there is always a chance of that further down the line, however Microsoft has a very strong dedication to OBAs. We will further define OBAs and how they integrate with LOB solutions with LOBi. There will be a plethora of new features in Office 14 around this integration. So the short answer is OBAs are here to stay for awhile.

In summary I received some great feedback on the OBA RAP for Loan Origination Systems. There was two customers that personally approached me that said this is exactly what they were looking for to solve their problems in this space. I am happy to of helped those of you in this space.

 

Tags: OBA EA ITIL Frameworks