Technology applications used to perform loan servicing functions for students were originally built on legacy platforms. For instance, mainframes used 4^th Generation Languages (4GL) like Key and Netron, which generated the COBOL code. Today, most of these code generators are being retired.  For the CIO / CBO, these platforms pose multiple challenges including:  lack of scalability, high cost of product changes, and inability to provide customer insights which result in a loss of customers and brand reputation due to poor customer servicing.

These challenges result in an even higher impact on some specific use cases, e.g.,  loan servicing for students financing their higher education. The topline of this industry is heavily dependent on customer experience for its business growth. The bottom line, on the other hand, depends largely on the "cost to serve." Organizations need to embark on a digital transformation journey to thrive in the student loan servicing business which requires the ability to both increase customer acquisition and reduce the “cost to serve” through the development of a platform that supports agility and flexibility.

 Digital transformation is not an easy journey. It involves complex makeovers from architecture to business processes, including:

• Customer-centric design: The entire business application needs to be reimagined keeping the student's digital experience at its core.
• Business processes: Rethink intelligent processes to enable students to make better and faster financial decisions.
• Digital platform: The entire ecosystem needs to be re-architected to ensure that it is future proof, loosely coupled, agile, and highly scalable.
• Secured: There should be zero compromises on security and data protection for each architecture layer and business process, as it involves dealing with a student's financial transactions.

Wipro has been part of digital transformation journeys for multiple customers. One such unique example is  migration of the legacy mainframe-based loan servicing platform to AWS for PHEAA (Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency), a leading student aid organization. PHEAA (https://www.pheaa.org/) is a national provider of student financial aid services, serving millions of students, and thousands of schools, through its loan servicing, loan guarantee, financial aid processing, outreach, and other student aid programs and services.

PHEAA chose AWS as the cloud platform for its digital transformation due to its extensive cloud services portfolio, scalability, integrated DevSecOps approach, and secured infrastructure. During this transformation, the organization is targeting to realize the following benefits:

• Reduced loan delinquencies by flagging problem loans at an initial stage, allowing for early intervention.
• Improved customer service agent productivity and reduced call times, as borrower information was readily available to the agents.
• Reduced call volumes, as inquiries were addressed comprehensively in the first call.