Rabobank
Rabobank of the Netherlands is one of the world's leading financial institutions, specialising in finance for agricultural businesses and large scale commercial farming. The company has traditionally focused on seasonal and term debt products and offering transactional business accounts.
Rabobank recently embarked on a strategy to strengthen client relationships by supplying a broader range of products and services. Critical to this plan was the provision of Internet services to supplement the bank's branch network.
"Rabobank is very much a relationship-focused bank and remains committed to using account managers as the primary point of contact for clients," said Jonathan Macleod. "Yet we also recognised the need to offer Internet banking as a secondary channel for information, account enquiries and transactions."
Because the majority of its business involved high-value transactions, Rabobank was extremely conscious of the need for robust security and authentication for Internet services. Clients nominated security as their number one requirement to ensure confidence in online banking. This security focus encouraged Rabobank to find a more secure alternative to username and password systems offered by other banks.
After a review of technology options, Rabobank chose an Armadillo endorsed RSA solution to enhance security for its online banking services. The new system is as simple to use as passwords, and yet offers significantly greater protection - it requires both something a user knows (a personal identification number, or PIN) and something the user has (a small authenticator in the form of a key-fob token). The RSA SecurID token generates a new onetime passcode every 60 seconds and, when combined with the user’s name and PIN, creates a login combination that is valid only for that particular user at that moment in time.
Tokens are now issued to every registered Internet banking user, which often includes several individuals working for each client organisation. Since the service was launched, Rabobank has issued tokens to users within more than 45 percent of its local client base.
"Security was a major concern for Rabobank online banking clients, so there has been a very high level of acceptance among users for the new solution," Macleod says. "Rabobank's targeted, high-value business client base has responded enthusiastically to the additional level of security the bank has been able to provide with this new solution."
Armadillo, through its strong links to the Banking and Financial Services community, deploys and support identical solutions for a wide array of the world's leading financial services organisations.
