Bank Technology News articles from February 2005

Bank Technology News archives from February 2005

Outsourcing: The Great Relief for Small Banks: Hiring out IT eases regulatory and tech burden.(Valley BanK outsourcing contracts Connecticut On-Line Computer Center)
February 1, 2005... In 2004, Valley Bank's IT infrastructure was struggling under its own weight. The Bristol, CT-based upstart was experiencing rapid growth, and processing all of those accounts in-house was becoming quite a chore. "Like any small startup bank,...

Cards: Firms Go to Works On Business Payments: Corporate expense accounts get automated.(online payment services)
February 1, 2005... A number of regional banks, including SunTrust, Commerce Bank and Intrust, have teamed up with Works, Inc., an Austin, TX-based electronic payments provider, to grow their commercial card business by automating payment and expense accounts for...

Marketing: Citi Taps the iPod Crowd: Gifts for on-line accounts go high-tech.(Citibank marketing strategy)
February 1, 2005... The wisdom of offering freebies to induce consumers to open bank accounts might be a matter of debate, but at least give Citibank credit for choosing to give away nothing less than the hottest consumer electronic device currently on the planet:...

A Trip to the Phishing Hole.(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... TowerGroup takes a hard look at a problem that has bank execs shaking their heads and wringing their hands. Copyright 2005 Thomson Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. http://www.thomsonmedia.com http://www.banktechnews.com

Hot on the ID Theft Trail: Will the Real Jane Doe Stand Up?(social security number to control Identity Theft)
February 1, 2005... Imagine stopping by a dealership with the intent of buying a new car-a gift to yourself for a job well done in 2004. With a perfect credit history and a low debt-to-earnings ratio, there's little standing between you and driving a new car out...

Processing: Automation Is A Patriotic Act For Transatlantic: Miami bank is among those adopting a new wave of technology to adhere to tough anti-money laundering laws.(TransAtlantic Bank)
February 1, 2005... Banks are automating their systems to comply with anti-money laundering laws made tougher by presidential directives and the USA Patriot Act, with many institutions facing increasing pressure from regulators and auditors. One of the areas...

News Makers.(computer Briefs)(Accounts-receivable conversion)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... ARC applications seen rising to 21% by 2007 Accounts-receivable conversion, which enables consumers' check bill payments to be converted, processed and settled as electronic debit transactions, is the fastest-growing application in the...

Top Tech Deals.
February 1, 2005... Number one EDS and Zerox Corp. announced a $40 million contract with Barclays Plc to supply its Workplace Management Services solution, which delivers office document services for print, copy and fax on a price-per-page basis. Number...

Biometrics: A Pen That Looks At Fingerprints May Be Coming To A Bank Near You: New device includes a finger scanner that authenticates the identity of the person signing a document.(James Bond world of biometrics)
February 1, 2005... Old-fashioned handwriting is new again. The business world now faces the prospect of a pen that will not work unless convinced of the author's identification-that the hand doing the writing is actually the hand that's supposed to be there. It...

The Dark Side Of Humanity: Rewarding Human Generosity With Crime: Phishers are praying on people who wish to donate to tsunami relief efforts, according to MasterCard.
February 1, 2005... Among the more brutal aspects of the Southeast Asian tsunami disaster are the stories of criminals who are preying on the victims, be it kidnapping, selling children into slavery, or simple burglary. There are also crooks who are victimizing...

Techies.(appointments)(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... * Rodger Overton was named CIO of AmSouth Bank. * Richard Hart III was appointed director of operations at BrownCo., the on-line brokerage division of J.P. Morgan Invest. * John Benton, previous head of eFunds' international division,...

Message Board.
February 1, 2005... "The regulators can shut down a bank." Gwenn Bezard, research director, AITE Group, on the legal importance of maintaining the integrity of bank data. "Smaller banks have fewer choices." Alenka Grealish, manager of the banking...

Phishing: Scammers May Soon Get More Customers To Bite: With 80 percent of all attacks aimed at financial groups, this scam isn't going away. But banks are fighting back.(Brief Article)
February 1, 2005... Phishing attacks are becoming more sophisticated, as the global use of spyware accelerates, according to two reports by TowerGroup. This is creating a particularly big headache for bank CEOs since 30 percent of securities are traded on-line;...

A Trip Overseas is Virtually Inevitable for the Back Office: The cost savings demonstrated by offshoring will outweigh fallout over U.S. job losses, a pair of experts say.(Interview)
February 1, 2005... The passing of the election hasn't cooled the debate over shipping jobs to overseas outposts like India, as Western companies weigh the promise of labor savings against the outcry from consumer groups and politicians. But most experts say...

Mortgage: Lenders Smooth The Bumpy Volume Road: Originators like DiTech and Boeing's credit union are using automation to alter how they market real estate finance options to customers, as well as better manage their workforce deployment.
February 1, 2005... Mortgage lenders have traditionally had their hands full when it comes to predicting and managing the boom and bust reality of an industry that's hyper-sensitive to interest rates. It's such a daunting challenge that huge hiring binges followed...

Auto Finance: Dealer-Track Shortens the Loan Process: New toolbar removes more manual labor from e-loans for cars.
February 1, 2005... When word processing was first introduced, typists around the globe marveled at the ability to move blocks of text around by doing the cut/copy/paste dance. At the same time, they realized how much of a relic typewriters had become. The same...

Customer Service: Getting A Decision And $$ In One Step: Firms like Provident are increasing loan volume, workforce efficiency and customer service by introducing straight-through processing to all aspects of the loan process.
February 1, 2005... Banks have made great strides in automating underwriting to speed the delivery of consumer loans. Most now provide decisions on car or personal loans within minutes, as branch reps enter data into Web-based interfaces that ferret customer...

Consumer Safety: Mobile Phones Spark Security Fears In Branches: One California community bank is concerned they might become ID thieves' weapon of choice.
February 1, 2005... Citizens Bank of Nevada County, a little bank in California, aims to thwart identity theft by banning mobile phone use in its five branches for fear that ones with built-in cameras might be used to snap photos of sensitive documents. IDC...

Making Way for Bigger Moves: Business continuity concerns caused Southern California's PFF Bank & Trust to pack up its data center and find new digs. While it was able to find a home just a few miles away, relocating an uber-sensitive, highly wired and technologically complex operation had a lot more moving parts than tables, chairs and desks.
February 1, 2005... The idea of relocating part of a bank's operations seems simple enough at first blush. Spend enough time working at any job for any kind of company, and you're bound to change office locations at least once or twice. But when it's the...

Psst !What's the Password?: Institutions from Bank of America to Riggs are placing bets on password management and user provisioning. While the cost savings can be substantial by cutting down on help desk calls, the technology is also proving a powerful security and compliance tool.
February 1, 2005... There's a city in Latin America where the incidence of bank robbery and fraud is so high, where fears of an inside job are so acute, that a leading bank has chosen to randomly assign its tellers to different branches every single day. In the...

Trust Services: Union Bank Drops SEI in Favor of Itself: Though the move is rare for a superregional bank, Union's decision to design a proprietary system not only addresses cost controls, but it also allows the bank to better serve clients.
February 1, 2005... Union Bank of California is trying to act like one of the big shots. The San Francisco-based $47 billion superregional bank has taken its on-line trust and custody service out of the hands of third-party wealth-management vendor SEI...

Governance: A Treasure Map in the Age of Regulations: Organizational charting, which keeps tabs on who is responsible for what, is getting more play in an time when institutional control and accountability is everything.
February 1, 2005... The need for CEOs to have an accurate picture of their organizations has perhaps never been greater. If it wasn't a priority before, Sarbanes-Oxley has made it so. Establishing internal controls, reporting and accountability-meaning who's...

The Linux Chronicles: Will Communal Software Bring a Surfeit of Riches?: Linux is hot, but the market is starting to chatter about the birth of open source rivals. Whether this competition is healthy or even necessary remains to be seen.
February 1, 2005... The next six months will see open-source software, and particularly the Linux operating system, round a turning point. Collectivism is coming of age. But with old-line firms and big commercial outfits like IBM, Computer Associates, Sybase and...

Using Predictive Analytics to Sift Out Fraudsters.
February 1, 2005... Arecent gartner survey revealed that identity-theft related fraud increased 80 percent from 2002 to 2003, with the average value of a fraudulent transaction at $6,795. While horror stories abound of hackers and fraudsters breaking into customer...

Check 21 Sparks Competition and Transformation.
February 1, 2005... The Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act has made checking and item processing the industry's sexiest topic since a similar watershed moment in banking history, Y2K. Unlike its much maligned predecessor, Check 21 has the potential to...

Business Continuity Planning Must Extend To Vendors.
February 1, 2005... Any client/vendor relationship worth its salt is symbiotic. A close working relationship leads to greater efficiency and productivity. That's true in most any industry, truer still for the financial services industry and its vendors, and...

A Bank Shouldn't Limit Itself to Just One BPO Partner.(business process outsourcing)
February 1, 2005... Whether to outsource or not is no longer the question most financial services companies are asking themselves. In the banking industry, we are all familiar and comfortable with buying in services from third party suppliers-activities such as...

Business Process Management is The Next Frontier.
February 1, 2005... The regulatory requirements laid out by the Home Mort-gage Disclosure Act (HMDA) demand mortgage providers report detailed data about borrowers, properties, applications and outcomes of transactions. Because of new reporting requirements that...