Bank Technology News articles from April 2009

Bank Technology News archives from April 2009

FRAUD: Insider Fraud Swells as Banks Suffer; Rogue trading and other insider fraud are at record levels; institutions scramble to keep up.(Leading Off)
April 1, 2009... Byline: Rebecca Sausner "Dear God, send me an accident," or so goes every risk manager's prayer, jokes Eva Leighton, director of operational risk at Citigroup, making light of the difficulty risk managers face in using only risk data to...

VIRTUALIZATION: Data Centers Go on a Power Diet; Server virtualization can reduce data center footprints, reduce energy use and cut overall expense by getting more productivity out of servers. MetLife Bank and Saxo Bank are sold.(Going Green)
April 1, 2009... Byline: John Adams Servers are about as efficient as the human brain, and that's not a good thing. "Most servers are utilized at only about 10 percent," says Tom Bittman, a vp for Gartner, who says the global market for X86 servers is...

People's Is Green All Over.(Green Initiatives)(People's Bank )(Brief article)
April 1, 2009... Byline: Rebecca Sausner Going green has become an enterprise-wide philosophy at People's Bank in Holyoke, MA. From the loans it makes, to its IT strategic plan, to employee engagement, the bank translates its mutual-owned business model...

SECURITY: Compliance, IAM Top Security Plans; The recession leaves CISOs with less to spend at a time when internal and external threats are on the rise.(By The Numbers)
April 1, 2009... Byline: Rebecca Sausner Security regulatory compliance and identity and access management were the top two security initiatives in financial services in 2008, just as they were the year before, according to Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu's...

Toss The Models Out The Window.(Interview)
April 1, 2009... Byline: Rebecca Sausner Peter Cotton was one of the architects at the heart of the CDO market but got out before the wheels came off the wagon. He left Morgan Stanley in 2007 to form venture-funded Julius Finance, a "model-fusion...

PAYMENTS: Collecting on the Healthcare Promise; Manual processes and fear of lots more consumer bad debt are prompting banks such as SunTrust to tap technology to reconcile healthcare payments.(Business Innovation)
April 1, 2009... Byline: Michael Sisk The healthcare industry is shifting toward a system where patients are responsible for a greater share of their healthcare costs, and that's got healthcare providers worried because patients have a terrible track...

WEB SERVICES: Lending Clarity from the Cloud; Cloud computing's being deployed as a less expensive, loan automation enabler for Landmark and Community First banks, which can now view pipeline reports, track loan processing, boost CRM and cross sell via a single service.(Customer Tactics)
April 1, 2009... Byline: John Adams Community First Bank was initially attracted to Web -based loan automation as way to allow loan processing and reporting to escape the bottlenecks of spreadsheet town. The side benefits of automated and standardized...

Survival Skills; Thousands of bank IT employees are losing their jobs as rivals merge and everyone else slashes headcount. But as Umpqua Bank's new CIO Colin Eccles can attest, there are opportunities, especially if you're willing to switch gears. Broadening skill sets and extra certifications won't hurt either.
April 1, 2009... Byline: John Adams Colin Eccles knows he's fortunate - being recruited to run an entire bank's tech shop is a plum assignment for an IT exec in any economy. But he's also made his own luck. Surveying the financial tech landscape like a...

Cost Cutting Is The New Black; The global recession and ailing banks force financial services CIOs to focus on cost cutting.
April 1, 2009... Byline: David Furlonger Banks throughout the world, and the vendors that provide products and IT services, are reeling from the crisis that has gripped financial markets and the economy. Most banks are cutting IT spending while they...

Some Sun During a Rainy Year; Nobody's job is totally safe, but architecture, project management, IT security and networking jobs have more armor than most.
April 1, 2009... Byline: Michael Sisk IT workers are feeling the pinch of job losses along with everyone else. Yet some IT jobs are proving more secure than others, and there are strategies anyone should use to keep the job they have. David Foote,...

INTEGRATION: Move Customers, but Don't Herd Them; Wells Fargo and Wachovia are neck deep in post-merger integration planning for their online channels. Attrition levels hang in the balance.(Direct Access)
April 1, 2009... Byline: Steve Marlin Bank consolidation, often of the emergency variety, has been on the rise the past couple of quarters. That presents a delicate balancing act: Move customers off legacy systems as fast as possible, but don't disrupt...

COLLECTIONS: Loss Mitigation in 3-D; Default management platforms evolve beyond product-based silos.(Customer Tactics)
April 1, 2009... Byline: John Adams Minimizing losses from bad loans in this economy can be an exercise in tapping water from a stone. But the process can be made slightly more fruitful when lenders can see a complete account of a consumer's financial...

OFFICE PORTFOLIO: Take Stock of Your Own Real Estate; REO rightly grabs the headlines. But it's also important, and not easy, to maximize financial performance of branches and other properties that banks own or lease.(Shifting Gears)
April 1, 2009... Byline: John Adams The arrival of automated branch performance management at Summit Bank also came with a 95 percent cost haircut, a welcome savings in a time where every dollar is gold. "When we were first looking at opening branches,...

RDC's Risky, So Know Your Customers.(Perspective)
April 1, 2009... Byline: Karl Leslie In January 2009, the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) issued joint guidance identifying a number of regulatory compliance and operational risks tied to the use of remote deposit capture (RDC)....

TREASURY: Saving Money by Cutting Cash; Cash optimization and forecasting investments payoff quickly.(Shifting Gears)
April 1, 2009... Byline: Rebecca Sausner "Optimization" is the magic word in much of banking technology in early 2009, as even the healthiest banks look to ride out the recession by focusing on capital preservation and efficiency. In the treasury function,...

Don't Stop Now: Maintaining IT Innovation Will Secure the Future.(Firing Line)
April 1, 2009... Byline: Rebecca Sausner, Editor-in-Chief Preserving capital at all costs is the rule of the day - or likely the year - as banks cut IT projects, compensation, bodies and dividends. Hunkering down is now the national obsession, with...

PROCESSING: Is New Venture A Threat to ACH Network? The shared processing platform won't be up and running for a year, but experts are already worrying that it will slow the industry's progress on e-payments.(Leading Off)
April 1, 2009... Byline: Glen Fest A forthcoming joint payments venture between Wells Fargo and Bank of America, through which both banks will share a platform to process their automated clearing house transactions, continues to percolate debate. Nearly a...

NEWS MAKERS.(Leading Off)(Interthinx )(Brief article)
April 1, 2009... A Bank That Has Overnight Hours As Web banking continues to mature - in new research, HSBC Direct reports 49 percent of American Web users now conduct most, if not all, of their banking on the Internet - micro trends are starting to emerge....

STOP, THIEF! Bankers as Partners In Crime Stopping; The ABA will offer a free data-sharing platform that will aggregate and analyze bank crimes and crime trends around the country.(Plugged In)
April 1, 2009... Byline: Rebecca Sausner Who'd a thunk the American Bankers Association would be giving the FBI a helping hand when it comes to tracking bank robberies, burglaries and ATM crimes? Ed Yingling, president and CEO of the ABA, won't exactly be...

TECHIES.(Plugged In)(Brief article)
April 1, 2009... Nicola Aliperti has been appointed CEO of Panini. He was previously HP's vp and CEO of Hewlett Packard Italy. Alliance Bank has promoted Cindy Cole to CIO. She was most recently svp of operations at the $600 million-asset bank. Wolters...

Message Board.(Plugged In)(Brief article)
April 1, 2009... "Obviously financial crisis are not fun, but they do create opportunity." Don MacDonald, CMO, Fiserv, on how some institutions will look to new technology to innovate their way out of financial troubles born of the recession. "The PCI...