Mambu is a cloud-based banking platform that empowers banking organizations to deliver banking services such as deposits and loans to their customers. Cloud Computing Today recently had the privilege of speaking with Frederik Pfisterer, COO of Mambu and an executive from one of Mambu’s customers, SavvyLoans.com, about the efficacy of the Mambu platform. Topics discussed included Mambu’s technology platform, data security, business continuity and Mambu’s customer base.
1) Cloud Computing Today: How would you describe the technology stack and platform underpinning your cloud banking platform?
Frederik Pfisterer (Mambu): Mambu is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) cloud banking platform that was developed in Java Enterprise and runs on any SQL database through the Amazon public cloud. The platform’s simple, agile architecture requires only a web browser or smartphone and Internet connection to deploy a powerful loan provisioning and management solution.
Alexander Chagoubatov (SavvyLoans.com): SavvyLoans.com also uses Java technology stack in addition to other cutting edge frameworks like Spring. Since the Mambu platform is built on the Java stack as well, this makes the communications around and integration of the project very smooth and enables us to get better overall support from the Mambu team.
2) Cloud Computing Today: How does your platform ensure security and confidentiality of customer data?
Frederik Pfisterer (Mambu): As a multitenant SaaS solution, Mambu takes special efforts to ensure complete data security and confidentiality of customer information. Annual penetration tests from different and independent third parties ensure both compliance with industry best practice and due levels of protection from hacking attempts. All data is stored in Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers which have strong physical security and industry standards compliance for data protection.
Alexander Chagoubatov (SavvyLoans.com): At SavvyLoans.com, we store all of our customer information in Mambu, which is PCI compliant. For this, our integration hub is on AWS and to Secure Shell (SSH) into it one needs to have a private key in order to ensure security and confidentiality. As an additional measure, all ports except those needed are blocked from public access.
3) Cloud Computing Today: What mechanisms and processes ensure business continuity of the cloud banking platform in the wake of a technical disruption or natural disaster?
Alexander Chagoubatov (SavvyLoans.com): When it comes to the SavvyLoans.com website, we are on an AWS cloud system with an elastic IP (EIP) address. If we experience trouble in one region, this allows us to clone our virtual machine (VM), remap it to another region and point the EIP address to it. In the disaster scenario, a technical disruption might require switching from AWS and spinning up a new VM with a different provider, but there would be little impact on clients.
Frederik Pfisterer (Mambu): Mambu provides multiple levels of protection from a business continuity perspective. Firstly, technology failure risks are mitigated by redundancy within a datacenter and across multiple datacenters. Secondly, business failure risks can be mitigated by escrow agreements and a regulatory compliant contractual framework.
4) Cloud Computing Today: Describe your customer base, its evolution to date and how you envision it progressing over the next year.
Frederik Pfisterer (Mambu): At Mambu’s genesis, our main focus was on providing cloud banking services to microfinance organizations in order support their operations, but over the years we’ve grown our primary global customer base to include online lenders, SME lenders and banks. We’ve begun doing more work in new areas, including the credit union, crowdfunding and P2P lending in which we’ve had great success, so we’re looking at eventually expanding our portfolio size by doing more business with those types of institutions.
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