(this article originally appeared in Finextra)

Dutch co-operative Rabobank has used a low-code platform from Siemens’ subsidiary Mendix to rebuild an online-only banking portal that manages €18 billion for over 500,000 Belgium- and German-based corporate customers.

The streamlined platform, dubbed RaboDirect, was built across weekly release cycles, with coders and non-technical business developers using drag-and-drop functionality to closely align business objectives with customer needs.Rabobank IT architect Joost Landman, says: “We were able to build functionality and release it in a fast cycle…to do it with a relatively small team with mostly — and this is important to me — business-oriented developers rather than code-oriented developers. This would enable us to get a really good cooperation with the business people, the product owner, and the end-user.”

Hans de Visser, vice president of product management at Mendix, adds: “It’s a significant milestone that the division’s IT department is able to work in short sprints in the application development process. It was rewarding to see developers and business professionals working very closely together with the Mendix platform to create satisfying products for Rabobank’s customers in Germany and Belgium.”

De Visser claims that the use of the platform helped to reduce the bank’s IT costs by 50%.

Neighboring bank ABN Amro has also used Mendix to bring order to a chaotic IT spread that included up to 400+ end-user apps, and 200+ employees-facing apps developed using a mix of Access, Excel, SharePoint, Domino and Lotus Notes.