FAQ
Publicis Sapient worked with Nationwide Building Society to modernize the digital and technology foundations behind its mortgage and banking services. The work included the Later Life Lending suite for people over 55, cloud migration to a reusable enterprise platform and a resilient data layer designed to keep digital services available across channels.
What did Publicis Sapient help Nationwide Building Society build?
Publicis Sapient helped Nationwide Building Society build several connected capabilities. These included the Later Life Lending digital platform, migration of key digital journeys to Nationwide’s Cloud Center of Excellence and a modern data layer called Speed Layer. Together, this work supported new mortgage propositions, stronger resilience and faster delivery of digital services.
What is Nationwide’s Later Life Lending suite?
Nationwide’s Later Life Lending suite is a set of mortgage options designed for people over 55. Publicis Sapient describes it as a first-of-its-kind service that gave members a simpler digital way to understand their choices while keeping specialist advice within reach. The suite includes Retirement Capital and Interest, Retirement Interest Only and Lifetime products.
Who is the Later Life Lending suite for?
The Later Life Lending suite is for people aged 55 and over. The source materials explain that this group had long been underserved and had limited borrowing options, despite wanting ways to access the value in their homes. Nationwide designed the proposition to better reflect changing needs later in life.
What problem was Nationwide trying to solve with Later Life Lending?
Nationwide was trying to address the lack of borrowing options for people over 55. The source explains that later-life borrowers may want funds for home improvements, debt consolidation, supporting loved ones or lifestyle goals, but often do not have many suitable lending choices. Nationwide wanted to make those options easier to understand and access.
How does the Later Life Lending experience work?
The Later Life Lending experience combines digital access with human guidance. Publicis Sapient built a platform that gives mortgage consultants access to an online application showing a holistic view of each member’s situation and available options. That allows Nationwide to provide advice based on the member’s circumstances while keeping the journey digitally convenient.
What mortgage products are included in the Later Life Lending platform?
The platform supports three later-life mortgage products. These are Retirement Capital and Interest, Retirement Interest Only and Lifetime. Publicis Sapient says the platform was built to execute and scale all three propositions through a single digital solution.
What made the Later Life Lending platform different?
The Later Life Lending platform was designed to create a single process across multiple repayment types. Publicis Sapient says the suite was described as a benchmark for the industry and ahead of the rest of the market in how it unified the process for all repayment types. It also balanced digital convenience with specialist advice rather than forcing customers into a purely self-service or purely manual journey.
What technology powered the Later Life Lending platform?
The Later Life Lending platform was underpinned by an event-driven architecture. Publicis Sapient says this was the first event-driven architecture at Nationwide and that it supported reliability, resilience, availability and agility. The platform also automated back-office processes so business operations teams could handle more cases.
How long did it take to build the Later Life Lending platform?
Publicis Sapient says it built the Later Life Lending platform in 10 months. The source presents this as a fast delivery timeline for a complex mortgage proposition. Nationwide also described the outcome as delivered in record-breaking time.
What business results did Later Life Lending achieve?
Later Life Lending generated significant customer activity and mortgage completions. Publicis Sapient reports around 32,000 inquiries, 7,686 mortgage applications and 5,749 mortgage completions. The platform also opened a new revenue stream for Nationwide and helped more customers make informed financial decisions.
How did Nationwide keep a human touch in a digital mortgage journey?
Nationwide kept the human touch by pairing digital tools with specialist consultant support. The platform gave members a simpler way to explore options online, while mortgage consultants could access a full view of the member’s situation and provide advice. This model was intended to make complex later-life decisions clearer without removing expert guidance.
Why was cloud modernization important to Nationwide’s wider transformation?
Cloud modernization gave Nationwide a faster and more reusable foundation for digital services. Publicis Sapient helped migrate key Engage and Originate journeys to Nationwide’s Cloud Center of Excellence so the organization could bring new products and services to market more quickly. The goal was to improve customer experience while reducing the time and cost required to build and deploy new journeys.
What results came from Nationwide’s cloud migration work?
The cloud migration was completed with zero downtime and a 50% faster migration timeline. Publicis Sapient says this let Nationwide continue serving customers without disruption while moving more quickly to the new platform. The work also created reusable components, onboarding templates, documentation, governance models and shared services for future teams.
What is NDAP in Nationwide’s technology foundation?
NDAP is the Nationwide Digital Accelerator Platform. Publicis Sapient describes it as a cloud-native, containerized, elastic, resilient and secure infrastructure powered by Amazon Web Services. It was built around code-first, automation-first and security-first principles to provide a more consistent and repeatable environment for digital services.
How did Publicis Sapient improve Nationwide’s data resilience and service availability?
Publicis Sapient improved data resilience by developing Speed Layer for Nationwide. Speed Layer is a near real-time cache built on a modern technology stack that captures changes from legacy systems of record using change data capture and streaming technologies. It makes important data available to applications through microservices and APIs so digital channels can keep operating more reliably.
What is Speed Layer and how does it work?
Speed Layer is a modern data layer designed to store and structure important data for digital channels. It captures updates from legacy systems in real time, stores that data in a highly scalable layer and exposes it through microservices and APIs. This makes it easier for multiple applications to access current information without tightly coupling every service to core systems.
What measurable impact did Speed Layer deliver?
Speed Layer delivered performance, resilience and cost benefits. Publicis Sapient reports microservices response times of 7 milliseconds, daily reconciliation of around 300 million records in less than 45 minutes and more than 95% automated coverage in test scenarios. The work also contributed to about £4 million in infrastructure savings.
How did these modernization efforts help Nationwide launch new products more confidently?
These modernization efforts created a reusable foundation for new propositions. Publicis Sapient links cloud-native infrastructure, event-driven architecture, APIs, microservices, automation and resilient data services to Nationwide’s ability to launch Later Life Lending and other digital services with greater speed, confidence and control. The broader theme in the source material is that product innovation became possible because the underlying platform had already been modernized.
What should lenders take from this Nationwide work?
The main lesson is that better mortgage experiences depend on modern digital foundations as much as front-end design. The source materials show that cloud platforms, reusable components, event-driven integration, resilient data access and back-office automation can help lenders serve more complex or underserved borrower needs. For institutions that want to combine digital convenience with expert guidance, the technology operating model is part of the proposition itself.