Bank Technology News articles from August 2008

Bank Technology News archives from August 2008

Standards: High Cost of SOA Yields Cooperation: Because SOA lacks standards, implementation is cost. A new association want to remedy that.
August 1, 2008... Theres scarcely a bank in the U.S. that doesnt have an SOA strategythe competitive pressures to move beyond legacy systems and create a flexible IT environment have filtered their way down to all but the smallest Main Street banks. And though...

Grid Computing: Data Centers in the Clouds: Take a "seven-hour job and make it run in seven minutes".
August 1, 2008... A couple of years ago Citigroups Capital Markets division faced a problem that most large trading enterprises were also confronting: an ever-increasing need for processing power to handle the risk management, market analysis and pricing...

Call Centers: First-Call Resolution Becomes Imperative: With each call handled by an agent costing an average of $5 to $7, banks realize they can't afford any redials.
August 1, 2008... When BNY Mellon Shareowner Services took a look at its call center tactics, the executive team was on the lookout for typical CSR benchmarksspeedy service, productivity goals and satisfactory resolutions. But when the analysis came back,...

Edit Index.
August 1, 2008... A, B, C, D Aite Group 15 ANZ 29 Bank of America 12 Bank of New York Mellon 23 Barclaycard US 16 Celent 12 Citigroup 16, 24, 31 Core Security Technologies 16 Credit Suisse 13 DataSynapse...

Good news from Web 2.0.
August 1, 2008... At last, Web 2.0 generates a winner in B2B social media! The sale of Generate Inc. to Dow Jones is the first piece of good news venture capital can point to in B2B social media space (Dow Jones Acquires B2B Relationship Builder, BTN Bulletin)....

The Impact Of the Credit Crisis On Basel II Compliance.
August 1, 2008... The current credit crisis threatens to undermine the three pillars of Basel II, with serious implications for those charged with compliance. Basel IIs intent is to ensure capital allocation is more risk-sensitive; separate operational risk...

Executive Hires: Can Outsider Drive Change At Citigroup?: Martin Lippert has the skill to give Citi the overhaul it needs. Will he be given the authority?
August 1, 2008... With another $2.5 billion in writedowns for the second quarter and performance pressures mounting, Citigroup chief Vikram Pandit is running out of time to orchestrate a turnaround. His daunting to-do list of latewhich includes shedding nearly...

News Makers.
August 1, 2008... SEFCU Friends Its Customers As Facebooks appeal spreads beyond GenY many FIs are trying to figure out ways to leverage the social-networking site. Case in point: Albany, NY-based credit union SEFCU will launch one-click access to account...

Mobile Banking: BofA Hedges Its Bet With mFoundry Stake: Bank of America's strategic investment in the mFoundry platform is a possible concession that its early-bird browser format won't be the backbone of m-payments.
August 1, 2008... Bank of America has made the most noise among U.S. retail banks about its mobile banking successwith more than one million customers able to use their mobile browsers to access the companys online banking site. But a recently announced...

Top Tech Deals.
August 1, 2008... Number One After a second-quarter net loss of $4.6 billion, Merrill Lynch sold back its 20 percent share of Bloomberg to the media and financial data company for $4.425 billion, and also announced plans to sell controlling interest in its...

Authentication: Yin and Yang? Mobile Banking and Voice Biometrics: Will customers take to using voiceprints via mobile phones as a more secure-and convenient-replacement for the PIN?
August 1, 2008... Inevitable is too strong a word, but there does seem a natural symbiosis between mobile banking and voice biometrics. Anyone who has scrambled in a purse or wallet for a credit card while talking on a cell phone and then speaking aloud a PIN or...

Fraud: Note to Self: Change Shirt Between Crimes: Thieves ripped off Citibank, WaMu and First Bank of St. Louis for more than $6 million in recent months; some lessons can be learned from the spree.
August 1, 2008... Not exactly criminal masterminds, but the three Ukrainian nationals busted for stealing PINs and debits, creating false cards, and pocketing the cash did have a pretty good run. And reading the legal documents on the case in the U.S. Eastern...

Techies.
August 1, 2008... * Fidelity Investments named Daniel Petrozzo, former co-global CIO and head of Enterprise Infrastructure for Morgan Stanley, as CIO. * MasterCard Worldwide announced Michael Manchisi as its new CTO. Manchisi succeeds Rob Reeg, who shifted...

Message Board.
August 1, 2008... Multi-factor authentication is bull. -Tom Kellerman, vp of security awareness, Core Security Technologies, noting that 95 percent of Trojans can best multi-factor authentication schemes. It is hard to fund technology with revenue from...

Green Banking: Not So Green: Most people still cling to receiving paper statements, even those who consider themselves green. What's more, they want compensation for going paperless.
August 1, 2008... Many people talk a good green game, but how many are really living up to all that talk? A new survey finds a huge number of people are not, but that perhaps banks can help. Of more than 2,300 consumers surveyed, more than 75 percent said...

Laptop Encryption: Pru Tackles 15K in a Month: Impending regulations and stakeholder expectations led Prudential to look to encrypt its entire mobile workforce. The process, and result, were better than expected.
August 1, 2008... Thomas Doughty VP, Information Systems Prudential Tom Doughty did his homework on laptop encryption projects before he chose McAfees Endpoint Encryption product (formerly Safeboot) and built the proprietary database and...

Lending: Taking a close look at Net Leads: Smaller mortgage companies lack the time and ability to thoroughly analyze the performance of leads they get from the Web. One firm looks to unravel hidden ROI.
August 1, 2008... In housings heyday, major lenders bought mortgage and refi leads by the bushel through aggregators like LendingTree or LowerMyBills.com, building up six-figure-plus monthly expenses. But many of those leads that previously breezed through...

Monitoring: Equifax Shifts to Preventative Meds: New ID Patrol service debuts credit locks and active fraud network alerts to spur waning consumer interest in credit monitoring products, keep up with the competition.
August 1, 2008... State regulation, upstart anti-fraud rivals, and fading public interest in plain-vanilla credit monitoring may be catalysts behind Equifaxs newest credit-protection product. But security analysts say Equifax is also keeping in step with the...

BIG Calling: How mobile banking is opening access to basic financial services in developing countries.
August 1, 2008... Mobile phones have emerged as a critical way to bring financial services to the globes legions of unbanked a billion of whom carry cellphones. Ushering them into the ormal economy is a major initiative for various playerspayments processors,...

GLobal Mobile Strategies and Adoption.
August 1, 2008... NORTH AMERICA While banks dabble in SMS/browser/application choices, payments firms and core processors are diving right in with transactional blueprintsand ready-to-go solutions for mid-tiers. Vendors mFoundry and Firethorn lead the way,...

Mobile Banking: Banks Down Under Monetize Mobile: ANZ and its New Zealand competitors have a revenue-generating model for mobile. Is it too late for the U.S.?
August 1, 2008... Theres no shortage of hype surrounding mobile banking, and there is even some impressive early consumer adoption. But whats been sorely lacking in U.S. deployments is a revenue model; so far, the channels been a money pit for the institutions...

Application Management: Mapping Apps to Avoid Disaster: Wachovia is among those banks using application dependency mapping (ADM) to reveal the often poorly understood application relationships across the enterprise.
August 1, 2008... Moving day for a data center, prior to the popular growth of server virtualization, was usually a disaster-in-waiting. Unplug server, move server, connect server, cross fingers. Even in a virtualized environment there still may be a...

Eight Steps to Image Exchange.
August 1, 2008... As check electronification progresses, image exchange capability is becoming a competitive imperative for financial institutions of all sizes. While the pace of adoption of image processing technology is unprecedented, certain segments of the...

Fault-Tolerant Virtual Machines.
August 1, 2008... Intense competition and high rewards for innovation make the financial services industry one of the biggest and most aggressive adopters of new technology; so its no surprise that financials have been leading adopters of virtualization...

What's Driving IT Spend For Basel II.
August 1, 2008... The financial industrys largest banks and broker-dealers have faced considerable challenges in their efforts to improve financial risk management and satisfy evolving regulatory requirements generated by the Basel II Capital Accord. Current...