The customer’s specific challenge involved the way their agents were interacting with e-OSCAR, directly through a third party web application that is made available to financial institutions. Agents were required to manually log in to this third party application, manage consumer disputes through their web interface, and submit responses in short regulatory mandated timeframes. This approach had increased risk associated with it, and limited the amount of automation and the degree to which credit bureau dispute information could be systematically integrated with the customer’s internal systems. To remedy this, an in-house platform needed to be built that integrated with e-OSCAR’s newly available APIs, enabling internal integration with their agent servicing platform, streamlining their entire credit bureau disputes process.

The Ippon team delivered an agile solution for the client by engineering multiple cloud-based microservices for integrating with the e-OSCAR system. These services focused on ingesting credit bureau dispute cases, facilitating agent workflows to work those cases, and submitted worked credit bureau dispute cases back to the major credit bureaus within regulatory required timeframes. With the development of this system of microservices, the customer’s servicing agents were able to easily manage credit bureau disputes that customers submitted to the major agencies as well as address disputes directly brought up with the customer during servicing calls, while enabling the customer to quickly and efficiently update credit bureaus as needed to ensure the correctness and accuracy of the information that was being reported.

The implementation of this system brings numerous benefits. Firstly, it results in operational savings of over $4 million annually. Additionally, it significantly enhances the customer (agent) experience by eliminating the need for manual image encryption, reducing cyber risks, and keeping agents within the case management system, thus bypassing the outdated and sluggish e-OSCAR UI. Manual processes are eliminated, including ACDV intake, system of record lookups, and image uploads. Furthermore, it offers enhanced analytics, reporting, and dashboards. This not only saves up to 2 minutes per AUD (Automated Universal Dataform) worked by the agent but also lays the groundwork for future automation, making operations more efficient and effective overall.

Financial institutions receive disputes from clients regarding errors within credit reports. The process to investigate a dispute letter requires agents to examine the documents sent by clients and gather information from vendors. e-OSCAR serves as a centerpiece for banks to interact with CRAs (Credit Reporting Agencies) such as Experian, TransUnion, and others. It houses information for credit consumers through which the bank or the consumer themselves can dispute the account or consumer information. Our client, a Top 10 US Bank specialized in credit cards, loans, banking and savings accounts, was looking to integrate and automate its current process at its agent management system.