Bank Technology News articles from February 2009

Bank Technology News archives from February 2009

REGULATIONS: Tough New Rules are in The Cards; New federal disclosure rules mean complicated reprogramming and cumbersome resets.(Leading Off)
February 1, 2009... Byline: John Adams When considering how complicated it's going to be for banks to comply with recently issued federal credit card regulations, the most important number to know is 18. That's how many months banks have to get in line...

SUSTAINABILITY: Hard Drive Savings; Alpine's mix of energy offsets, community outreach and building strategies helped it become ISO 14001 certified. But when it comes to shaving wasteful use out of its hard drives, the western Colorado bank's really got it MAID.(Going Green)
February 1, 2009... Byline: John Adams Chris Brown patrols a computer room invisible to most of Alpine Banks of Colorado's staff and probably all of its customers. But for a bank that wears green like a Masters golf champion, some of the institution's most...

Green Initiatives.(Going Green)
February 1, 2009... Sovereign's Green Thumb Huron State Forest in Michigan is a little greener this year after Sovereign Bank and Fiserv's CheckFree planted a tree for every electronic bill activated during a two-month period last spring, and another tree for...

HIGHLIGHTS: State of the IT Union; The Financial Services Roundtable tracks hundreds of data points that highlight industry trends, from ACH payments to ATM deployments. There are some surprises.(By The Numbers)(Discussion)
February 1, 2009... Byline: Rebecca Sausner The Financial Services Roundtable recently released its annual tome that quantifies the state of the industry - including what the group dubbed "a host of new material to shed light on the challenging environment,"...

Wealth, BI are Still Priorities in '09; Washington Trust has spent the last few years investing heavily in technology infrastructure. In 2009 investment slows and the focus turns to strategic growth.(Interview)
February 1, 2009... Byline: Rebecca Sausner Things at Rhode Island-based Washington Trust are holding up quite well. Total loans grew 12 percent in the first nine months of 2008 and deposits increased $127.7 million in the third quarter. The bank declined...

ANALYTICS: Model Play Adapts To changing Game; The new account market's on hiatus, but modeling tools are hardly being benched. They're instead being repurposed as profit maximizing and default minimizing engines.(Business Innovation)
February 1, 2009... Byline: Rebecca Sausner Make the most of what you've got," is the mantra in the credit card business these days, as new lending is all but shut down and consumers are spending and defaulting in ways legacy models are not equipped to...

MOBILE MARKETING: Will Coupons Kickstart Mobile Revenue? Visa and JPMorgan Chase offer customers coupons on their Android phones; ClairMail promises coupons too. Mobile banking may have finally found its business model.(Customer Tactics)
February 1, 2009... Byline: Rebecca Sausner The difference between a money pit and a long-term investment is often a case of semantics, and that's the territory mobile banking has straddled the last few years. Just about every bank is either on the road, or...

Luring Them In; Forget asset-backed securities. The revenue generating special purpose vehicles for 2009 are price optimization engines, next wave CRM platforms and other maturing analytic tools that build relationships and hook deposits from a shrinking pool of customer cash.(Cover Story)(Company overview)
February 1, 2009... There are times when nothing tastes as sweet as plain old vanilla. With securitization markets shut down, and the cost of other funds hovering between daunting and prohibitive, the allure of the nothin' fancy retail deposit is growing...

Price Your Weapon Wisely.(Cover story)
February 1, 2009... Byline: Anthony Malakian Trading high interest for cheap channels won't work for everyone. Precision pricing, and frequent re-pricing, of relationship accounts using the intelligence gained from deposit and customer optimization tools is...

CHANNEL MIGRATION: Online Banking Lessons From Canada; Despite cultural differences, institutional experiences north of the border are transferrable to the U.S. One tip: Don't worry so much about hard adoption percentages.(Direct Access)
February 1, 2009... Byline: Michael Sisk Consumer adoption of Web banking has been a major success story in Canada, leading some to wonder if that success can be duplicated south of the border, particularly among Canadian banks with retail operations in the...

EQUIPMENT: Put Those Barcodes Away for Good; BofA, Wells and FSTC preach that RFID can shave time and cost out of the IT asset inventory process.(Shifting Gears)
February 1, 2009... Byline: John Adams If the game is IT asset tag, Bill Conroy has no problem being told he's "it." Ideally, he'd like everyone to be it. Conroy, the Chicago-based infrastructure optimization program executive for Bank of America, is also...

PROJECT ROLLOUTS: Structured Efficiencies; First Tennessee's hub-and-spoke rollout provides flexibility.(Shifting Gears)(Company overview)
February 1, 2009... Byline: John Adams At First Tennessee, being at the wheel of a remittance processing upgrade initiative means adding and subtracting spokes from the hub on demand. In a move designed to foster flexibility, the institution will set up...

It's About the Social Not The Network.(Perspective)
February 1, 2009... Byline: Jesse Torres In 2008, as the FDIC began its roll Call of failed banks, consumers became panicked and concerned. Fears increased as the FDIC and the media announced the potential for hundreds of bank failures over the coming year....

MORTGAGE: They'll Be Careful This Time; Staff-strapped lenders lean on automation to handle a sudden jump in applications. Lessons learned?(Business Innovation)
February 1, 2009... Byline: John Adams It would probably be an overstatement to say refi-hungry mortgage borrowers are stampeding Macon Bank in Franklin, North Carolina. But after the Federal Reserve lowered interest rates late last year to uncharted...

Introducing "Going Green" - More Than A CSR Play.(Firing Line)
February 1, 2009... Byline: Rebecca Sausner, Editor-in-Chief Green IT is more than this year's "two-factor," "in-the-cloud," or "as-a-service" - not just another IT buzzword or trend that grabs attention for awhile then fades just in time for the next big...

HUMAN CAPITAL: Quick Lessons For New Talent; In a merger-heavy environment, online training of new employees is becoming SOP to ensure smooth conversions.(Leading Off)
February 1, 2009... Byline: John Adams Harris Bank's shrewd abstention from subprime mortgages and other toxic lending practices put it in a great position to go shopping recently, picking up Ozaukee Bank in Wisconsin and First National Bank and Trust in...

News Makers.(Leading Off)(Brief article)
February 1, 2009... Do You Really Know Your Vendor? More than half of financial services firms (51 percent) questioned by PricewaterhouseCoopers cop to not requiring that third party servicers comply with the institution's privacy policies. PwC's survey also...

JOBBING IT OUT: Is 'Everything-as-a-Service' Wise? With budgets under pressure, everything's got a place at the outsourcing table. There's even a seat for the CIO.(Plugged In)
February 1, 2009... Byline: Rebecca Sausner In November, Perimeter eSecurity CEO Brad Miller told BTN his business was strong, as CFOs happily signed off on any necessary IT expenditure that could be morphed into the "as-a-service" model. Perimeter's...

TECHIES.(Plugged In)
February 1, 2009... * Deutsche Telekom group CIO Peter Sany will become CTO at UBS in April. Sany's got experience in the aforementioned telecom field, as well as long stints at IBM and pharmaceutical giant Novartis. Sany will succeed Scott Abbey, who played a key...

Message Board.(Plugged In)(Brief article)
February 1, 2009... Don't flood me with 10,000 emails, I already get 10,000 emails. Barbara J. Perino, svp, Operations & Technology, Washington Trust, with advice to technology vendors on how to get her attention. I could not be more pleased that we are...