Developing and supporting the Credit Documentation System for over 20 years

Where they started

The Royal Bank of Scotland needed an application to support Credit Documentation within the RBS Group. The process of creating credit loan applications was manual and time-consuming, requiring staff to assemble complex contract documents by answering detailed questions about each deal — with the resulting documentation needing to be stored securely with appropriate metadata and access controls.

The solution needed to bring together document management, automated contract generation, and integration with the bank’s line-of-business systems into a single, cohesive platform. It also had to meet the strict regulatory and compliance requirements of one of the UK’s largest banking groups, while being robust enough to serve users across the organisation at scale.

What we did

Imagefast developed the Credit Documentation System (CDS) — a bespoke application used for credit documentation within the RBS Group. The solution brings together the OpenText eDOCS document management system, HotDocs contract generation, and integrations into the bank’s line-of-business systems to create a seamless, end-to-end workflow.

CDS allows RBS staff to create credit loan applications by answering a set of pre-defined questions. Based on the answers provided, the system automatically generates the appropriate contract documentation using HotDocs, then saves it into the document management system with the correct metadata and security applied. This removes the need for manual document assembly and ensures consistency and compliance across every transaction.

The complexity of the solution is significant. The underlying technology stack spans eDOCS DM, HotDocs, Microsoft SQL Server, IBM DB2, custom integration code, and a virtualised client solution serving tens of thousands of users across the bank. Upgrades require careful, staged migration paths — for example, moving eDOCS through multiple intermediate versions before reaching the target release, while ensuring that database schemas, integration code, compiled binaries, and third-party components all remain compatible.

Since the original development, Imagefast has supported and evolved CDS for over 20 years. This has included several major platform upgrades — moving through successive generations of Windows Server, SQL Server, eDOCS, HotDocs, and Microsoft Office — as well as ongoing maintenance, technical debt removal, and continuous improvements to keep the system on current, supported technology.