LendingCrowd is an online peer-to-peer lending company that prides itself on being one of the fastest-growing fintech lending platforms in the UK. Its primary aim is to fund the ambitions of British businesses by connecting them with lenders seeking a better return on their money.

With ambitious growth plans itself, LendingCrowd stabilised and matured its AWS infrastructure with the support of the BJSS Managed Service team. The fintech now has an AWS architecture that has been built and managed for growth, security and stability.

Challenge 

Founded in 2014, LendingCrowd entered the financial services industry as a digital native. Its IT infrastructure was built using best of breed AWS technologies that helped fuel the company’s growth.

As LendingCrowd grew, so did its infrastructure in terms of cost and complexity. This growth triggered some concern within LendingCrowd that its AWS estate was not being managed effectively. In order to grow with confidence, LendingCrowd wanted to work with an AWS managed service provider who could evolve its infrastructure to generate cost savings, improve security, ensure scalability and stability.

To achieve this, LendingCrowd selected to work with BJSS – an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner and ISO27001 accredited managed service provider.

Solution

Before setting up LendingCrowd’s managed service, we conducted an AWS Well-Architected review to evaluate the company’s existing architecture and identify a remediation plan. This helped to assess LendingCrowd’s architecture against five pillars – operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency and cost optimisation.

The output of our Well-Architected review allowed for a smooth service onboarding process and enabled our Managed Service team to prioritise remediation tasks.

LendingCrowd’s AWS architecture is now managed entirely by the ISO27001 BJSS Managed Service team who provide:

• AWS infrastructure management
• Billing and license management
• Continuous improvement and cost optimisation
• Service management reporting
• Engineering support
• Service security

Before we started working with LendingCrowd, the company had little in-house experience and knowledge of AWS products and services. As part of our Managed Service, we also provide a knowledge transfer to help upskill internal teams, so they have full visibility of the service we deliver.

Benefits 

An architecture for growth

As a result of our Managed Service, LendingCrowd now has an AWS architecture that aligns with its growth ambitions. Having been accredited as a lender under the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS), LendingCrowd is anticipating a rise in demand for its services. We can help the company to rapidly scale to meet these demands and encourage business growth. Changes can be made with ease, and the company can be confident that its infrastructure is robust in the event of rising demands.

Improved security posture

We have evolved LendingCrowd’s AWS architecture to significantly improve its security posture and ensure compliance with industry regulations and the company’s internal policies. Its core applications can now cope with high loads and can filter out web-based attacks. We’ve also introduced a reliable client VPN that LendingCrowd can manage itself, enabling the organisation to work remotely – a benefit that has proven to be invaluable during the Covid-19 crisis. LendingCrowd’s data is now more secure, and we have implemented sophisticated authentication controls to prevent the risk of unauthorised access into LendingCrowd’s systems.

Increased stability

We have increased the stability of LendingCrowd’s AWS architecture. The creation of Infrastructure-as-Code tooling allows entire new app environments to be stood up in minutes, enabling LendingCrowd to evolve its infrastructure rapidly in line with changing demands. This is further complemented by the creation of CI/CD pipelines to automate the build and deployment process from end-to-end. Stability has also been improved by the enhancement of CloudWatch monitoring and the implementation of high-priority monitoring alerts using Opsgenie.