Alliance & Leicester’s business finance unit has completed the migration of its lease administration system to a service hosted by a third party, to ensure stability and cut costs.

The lease administration system manages A&L’s portfolio of asset finance contracts and is provided by supplier TietoEnator, which will also provide application management support for the system in the next five years.

Citrix thin-client technology will be used to connect the servers hosted by the vendor over a secure, encrypted network.

The benefits from a hosted service include the reduction of A&L’s reliance on multiple third parties for support. The bank also claims a reduction of IT fixed costs, improved disaster recovery and a more robust system to ensure the service is kept up and running.

“One of our key objectives has been to provide staff within our business with a fully supported lease management system and operating platform from which to manage existing agreements and facilitate business growth over the next three to four years,” said director of lending operations at Alliance & Leicester Commercial Bank Martin Evans.