FINMAS: Strengthening market position with AI expertise and MLOps infrastructure

About FINMAS:

FINMAS is a specialized digital service provider for the Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe, the largest financial group in Germany. As part of the Hypoport Group, FINMAS offers various digital solutions to enhance the performance of the savings banks, particularly in the areas of mortgage lending, consumer loans and lead generation. The main products include BaufiSmart, a digital platform for real estate financing, and KreditSmart, a platform for personal loans. With these tools, the savings banks can present their financing products even better on the market and offer their internal and external sales channels transparent and user-friendly solutions.

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The Challenge:

FINMAS has its own data science team, but needed deeper expertise in AI to make its product offerings smarter. As the company operates in a highly regulated market, it also needed an infrastructure that complies with strict banking regulations.

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The Solution:

FINMAS was looking for a partner that could deepen its AI expertise and had the knowledge of MLOps to run its on-premise AI cluster. In Kineo, they found a partner that met these requirements. Kineo set up the complete infrastructure on site and met all regulatory requirements. In addition, Kineo provided input and guidance on ideas for AI use cases and helped with their further development.

The most important use cases included:

• KPI monitoring and forecasting: We have developed a system that uses time series forecasting and outlier detection to monitor and predict key performance indicators (KPIs). With this system, FINMAS is able to proactively identify trends and potential performance deviations and react in time to maintain competitiveness.
  • Forecast: If our system predicts a significant drop in loan applications for the next quarter, FINMAS receives an early warning and can proactively adjust its marketing strategies to keep application numbers stable.
  • Outlier detection: For example, if a customer's number of loan applications unexpectedly drops by 20%, FINMAS is alerted by our system so that it can quickly investigate the cause and implement strategies to increase application rates.

• AI-driven product recommendations and notifications: This solution improves the personalization of customer interactions through AI-driven systems. Using advanced data pipelines and a hybrid cloud setup, these systems ensure seamless operation within the regulated environment.

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The Impact:

Kineo enabled FINMAS to run AI workflows and data pipelines in a hybrid cloud and on-premise configuration, facilitating the personalization of customer interactions and the monitoring of key performance indicators. In particular, the KPI monitoring and forecasting system has significantly improved KPI management, helping savings banks to quickly address potential issues and maintain competitiveness in a highly regulated market.

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Summary and outlook:

FINMAS strives to remain at the forefront of the banking sector through the consistent adoption of AI and data science technologies. These efforts are critical to improving the customer experience through personalized, efficient service via AI-driven tools such as chatbots and recommendation engines. AI also streamlines operations by automating routine tasks, reducing costs and minimizing errors, especially in mortgage processing and fraud detection. By using advanced data analytics, FINMAS can make better, data-driven decisions, identify market trends and improve risk management. These initiatives ensure that FINMAS and the savings banks remain competitive, innovative and adaptable in a digitalized financial landscape.

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