Bank Technology News articles from April 2005

Bank Technology News archives from April 2005

Data Protection: BofA Grounds Tapes After: In-Transit Snafu It's unclear what happened to lost client records.
April 1, 2005... Backup tapes of consumer data at Bank of America will no longer fly the friendly skies. After losing five tapes in transit to a backup facility, and garnering national headlines when two of the tapes turned out to contain the personal...

Enterprise Computing: Regions' Platform Bridges Great Divide: Its new strategy has major CRM ramifications.(Regions Financial Corp.)
April 1, 2005... Birmingham, AL-based Regions Financial Corp. is consolidating its consumer and commercial services onto a single platform, a move that it hopes will boost efforts to cross-sell personal and business banking products. This month, the firm...

Corporate Travel: Automating Expenses: MasterCard goes right to accounts payable.
April 1, 2005... Marriott International has agreed to participate in MasterCard's e-Folio program, which electronically presents to bank card issuers and their corporate customers detailed expense data that can then be flowed directly into a company's expense...

Edit Index.
April 1, 2005... A AmeriVault Services 38 B Baltimore Ravens 10 Banc of America Securities 22 Bank of America 38 Bank One 37 Barclays 30...

Editor's Note.(Correction Notice)
April 1, 2005... In "The Fifth Column" (March 2005), BTN incorrectly reported that Melissa Finnell is employed by First Citizens Bank in Raleigh, NC, and that the bank uses Gladiator technology. Finnell is employed by First Citizens Bancorp, a $630 million...

Showcasing The Best Community Bank IT Initiatives.
April 1, 2005... Enterprising ideas aren't just those that come from big banks with big budgets. If necessity is indeed the mother of invention, then small banks are just as likely to churn out technology initiatives that further a business opportunity, satisfy...

ID Management: SOX Will Make Some Firms Rich, Just Watch: Sun and PricewaterhouseCoopers launch joint bid to capture the lucrative identity management and compliance markets.
April 1, 2005... Follow the money. Sun Microsystems and PricewaterhouseCoopers are tackling two of the most bedeviling problems facing financial institutions today: ID management, thanks to Sarbanes-Oxley, and internal security controls, thanks to a wave of...

News Makers.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Survey: Spam declines, But Security fears rise Some 57 percent of consumers have seen less spam in the last year, according to a survey by Bigfoot Interactive, a marketing technology provider. However, 34 percent say they've received a...

Taxes: JPMorgan Chase Opens A Laboratory To Untangle A Web Of Tax Rules: It's a one-stop info source for institutional investors who face an increasingly complex array of international laws.
April 1, 2005... With the global economy turning the world into a complex web of tax laws and regulations, JPMorgan Chase & Co. has jumped into the fray in hopes of easing all of that confusion-and making a buck doing it. That's led to the launch in late...

Top Tech Deals.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Number one Corillian and Quova have entered into a strategic partnership to protect the Web operations of financial institutions and electronic commerce organizations from Internet-based attacks. The partnership is a response to customer...

Security Breach: Gangland Phishers Turn To Key-logging For Heists: Watchfire says it is today's greatest threat to on-line safety, resulting in ID theft and stolen passwords.
April 1, 2005... Much like traditional bank robbers who gradually escalate the scope and ambition of their thefts, Internet criminals are dramatically upping the ante, leaving businesses and consumers who fear Web-related crimes wondering where the game is...

Techies.(appointments etc.,)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... BA Venture Partners, a venture capital firm in the technology industry, promoted Jim Jones and Sharon Wienbar to managing directors. * ADP Brokerage Services Group, a division of Automatic Data Processing, announced that Tom Corrigan joined...

Message Board.
April 1, 2005... "The industry is conservative." John Worrall, vp or worldwide marketing, RSA, on why banks are sometimes slow to adopt new technology. "Your mailbox is probably the number one insecure place on Earth." Joshua Levine, CTO and...

On-line Banking: Customer Satisfaction Level Passes Important Milestone: For the first time, consumers rate satisfaction with on-line banking higher than the overall banking experience.(Brief Article)
April 1, 2005... Sure, on-line banking is growing by leaps and bounds-Forrester Research says the number of U.S. households banking on-line has doubled since 2000, totalling 69.3 million households in 2004-but how happy are customers with the service? A new...

The Wealthiest Customers Can Pose Big Hurdles: A financial institution that specializes in serving the richest of the superrich finds that service means being everywhere at once, and staying ahead of complex regs.
April 1, 2005... Being the financial handholder for the wealthiest, people whose assets and estates make Alex Rodriquez look like a starving artist, brings with it a variety of complications that warrant a special mix of products and technological know-how. ...

Trading: Algorithms Headed for New Frontiers: Advanced matrices for equity transactions are being applied to other financial instruments, such as options, futures and foreign exchange. And you thought the game was competitive before.
April 1, 2005... Automated electronic trading powered by sophisticated algorithms is not just for equities anymore. The tools, which use complex mathematical equations to determine market-optimal and cost-effective trading strategies, are set to aid more in the...

Cards: Consumer Plastic Continues Its March: People are turning increasingly to credit and debit cards for smaller transactions. That will fuel growth for the industry, which historically has been shut out of purchases under $10.
April 1, 2005... Credit and debit card companies have a simple message for Americans-no purchase is too small for plastic. And there is ample evidence U.S. consumers are heeding that notion, as card usage continues to eat away at markets formerly beholden...

Cross-selling: Toppling Silos Key To Wells' Web Success: Breaking down tech and cultural divides between corporate and consumer divisions, as well as providing more transparency for customers, is leading to greater overall use of the bank's portal.
April 1, 2005... Channel integration works best when the client experience across channels is seamless and produces opportunity to cross-sell. The more successful institutions are achieving this by rolling out tools that give users a more detailed look at more...

The Cost of Doing Business: The debate over multi-factor authentication for electronic transactions by customers-large and small, retail and commercial-is growing louder, and pretty much everyone says industrywide use is virtually inevitable. So why is almost nobody doing it? Follow the money.
April 1, 2005... There's nothing like a high-profile lawsuit to bring a murky problem to light, and then proceed to muddle the issue even further. Case in point: You can't talk to anyone in financial circles without hearing an opinion about the long-term impact...

HR Management: Hated Working Here? Log On And Vent.: Firms like Union Planters, Fifth Third and Provident are using a product that automates exit interviews. Far from being viewed as impersonal, employees seem to like it.
April 1, 2005... In the relentless pursuit of efficiency, a company called Nobscot Corp. is trying to help companies reap the benefits of an area that's been long-ignored but that can produce a treasure trove of usable information: the exit interview. And it's...

Treasury Management: Compass Charts a Course to ePrinting: At the behest of title companies, Compass is providing remote access for printing its official-or teller-checks to save time and money during mortgage closings.
April 1, 2005... Some innovation is simply finding a new use for a long-standing technology or channel-not everything's necessarily brand new. For Compass Bank, finding a different way to use the Web to achieve faster check processing is bringing the hope of...

Modeling: An Early Diagnosis Of Married Platforms: New software allows JPMorgan Chase to understand how its IT systems will interact with Bank One's-valuable insight given the tough decisions that have to be made.
April 1, 2005... While the Street last year debated how complementary the investment banking/retail marriage between J.P. Morgan Chase and Bank One would be, Tom Martin was busy analyzing a more difficult coupling brought on by the $58 billion merger. ...

Check 21 Creates Complexity and Fraud Risk.
April 1, 2005... When the Check 21 Act went into effect nearly four months ago, it was portrayed as one giant leap into the 21st Century. In reality, like any major transformation, what underlies it is a series of small steps. Likewise, while the hype focused...

Branch Growth Should Hinge on Service Capacity.
April 1, 2005... The financial services industry is caught in the de novo branching trap, and the walls are quickly closing in. Tom Brown, founder of Second Curve Capital and bankstocks.com, says the estimated U.S. population growth from 2003-2004 was 5.6...