Bank Technology News articles from July 2009

Bank Technology News archives from July 2009

NEW CHANNELS: USAA's Quietly Leading the Mobile Race; Consumer RDC for iPhone is the latest in the virtual bank's arsenal of offerings.(Leading Off)
July 1, 2009... Byline: Rebecca Sausner USAA is the first U.S. bank to announce a retail remote deposit capture app for the iPhone, yet another coup in the single-branch bank's stealth dominance of mobile banking adoption. The iPhone-based RDC tool...

DUE DILIGENCE: Governments May Mandate Green Energy; With green mandates from governments a real possibility, more companies are establishing formalized policies to judge themselves and vet outsourcers.(Going Green)
July 1, 2009... Byline: Michael Sisk Green initiatives might be a wise way to improve energy efficiency and lower costs; they might also be good PR. In either case, however, having a green policy has been optional. Now many business leaders are wondering...

Paper Push Swaying Consumers.(Green Initiatives)
July 1, 2009... Consumers are more concerned about cleaning up their desks than cleaning up the environment, with 63 percent of consumers surveyed telling Javelin Strategy & Research that they'd turn off paper statements to reduce clutter, but only 44 percent...

CORE SYSTEMS: Platform Market Declines, But North America Gets Hot; Will U.S. banks finally let go of their fears of global vendors?(By the Numbers)
July 1, 2009... Byline: Rebecca Sausner Last year was a recessionary market for global banking platform sales, but spirited international competition among vendors means U.S. banks will have more options if and when they begin to consider new projects....

The Other Systemic Threat to Banking; Bank exec Louis Rosenthal says inadequately managed outsourcing agreements can post a major security and financial threat to institutions.(Interview)
July 1, 2009... Byline: John Adams Credit default swaps, core processing systems and ATM networks would all appear to be different animals in the financial zoo, but Louis Rosenthal says there's some dangerous common ground. A consultant who's also...

MORTGAGE: The FHLB of Pittsburgh takes a Closer Look; Automated tools do a deeper dive into the quality of collateral pledged to secure low-cost loans to member banks.(Business Innovation)
July 1, 2009... Byline: John Adams Like a football team inspecting its helmets for cracks after each play, The Federal Home Loan Bank of Pittsburgh has installed new technology that gives it the ability to see whether members pledged collateral is strong...

The Future of the Bank Branch; Unlike electronic channels designed mostly for efficiency, new branch designs and technologies should encourage face-to-face customer engagement. It's more expensive, but tomorrow's retail branch is a uniquely powerful relationship-building channel that returns the investment with customer loyalty and rising profits.(Cover Story)
July 1, 2009... Byline: Michael Sisk Washington Mutual's experiment in futuristic branch design - at a cost of $1 billion - has come to an ignominious end. The new owner, JPMorgan Chase, considers the open floor-plan design confusing to customers and...

Design Diversity is the Future.(Cover Story)
July 1, 2009... Byline: Michael Sisk Paul Seibert of EHS Design, based in Seattle, OR, has designed 1,400 bank branches during his career. He believes that continued branch innovation - driven by customer tastes and banks' willingness to experiment -...

Five Branch Technologies To Watch.(Cover Story)
July 1, 2009... Byline: Michael Sisk Cash Recyclers Though an established technology at many banks, cash recyclers will continue to change branch environments where they are installed. By freeing employees from counting money and balancing amounts at...

RDC: Small Business Finds Other RDC Providers; Banks haven't been aggressive about offering RDC to small business clients, and other firms are rushing to fill the gap.(Customer Tactics)
July 1, 2009... Byline: Chris Costanzo Virtually all large and mid-tier banks offer remote deposit capture to corporate customers, but the industry has been slow to offer these services to the small business segment, leaving an opening for competitors...

MOBILE: E*Trade Expands Offering to iPhone; Last year the online broker introduced the mobile trading app Mobile Pro for the Blackberry; the success of that launch, plus the runaway success of Apple's smart phone, prompted E*Trade to adapt Mobile Pro for the iPhone.(Direct Access)
July 1, 2009... Byline: Michael Sisk The iPhone has been called the killer app for mobile banking, but online trading houses have been pushing smart phone technology the furthest, with E*Trade and TD Ameritrade releasing robust trading apps - first for...

CORPORATE PAYMENTS: JPMorgan Chase Sets the Bar for Payments; Embrace of ISO protocols may force others to follow suit.(Business Innovation)
July 1, 2009... Byline: John Adams Even early into adoption of the ISO 20022 messaging standard in its treasury services business, JPMorgan Chase's Louise Gorman can provide a peak into how the standard may hasten payment initiation and reporting far...

CORE PLATFORMS: A Simple Path to Playing Catch Up; Once complacent institutions turn to quick, Web-enabled upgrades to offer products and tools necessary for survival.(Shifting Gears)
July 1, 2009... Byline: John Adams Long comfortable with its stable rural customer base, Four County Bank has woken up to market conditions that leave it in dire need of a technology upgrade. How dire? "Right now, we don't have full Internet...

High Volume Crucial to Contactless Success.
July 1, 2009... Byline: Mark Rennie Davis Contactless payments present a huge, global opportunity for banks. The technology can help card issuers further displace cash usage by providing consumers and merchants with a convenient and quick payment method...

VENDOR MANAGEMENT: A BIT of Competition; Shared Assessments' standardized security questionnaires battle proprietary vetting systems as the tool of choice to manage supplier risks.(Shifting Gears)
July 1, 2009... Byline: John Adams Vendor management is a tug of war for banks, with the cross-institutional efficiencies claimed by shared assessments of vendor security and the traditional surety of proprietary consultant-led vetting yanking hard on...

The Paradox of Mobile Banking.(Firing Line)
July 1, 2009... Byline: Rebecca Sausner, Editor-in-Chief What's that saying about Lies, damned lies, and statistics? The current state of the U.S. mobile banking market brings Benjamin Disraeli's phrase to mind as we see mobile banking numbers tailored to...

MERGER CONVERSIONS: This White Knight's On A Rocket; When an acquisition involves a failed bank, everything happens faster. It helps to have a thorough IT checklist.(Leading Off)
July 1, 2009... Byline: John Adams The FDIC's auctioneers operate the new bank repo market with lightning speed - institutions can go from failing to the auction block to shotgun acquisition in less than a week; and be essentially assimilated as soon as...

NEWS MAKERS.(Leading Off)
July 1, 2009... Charles Forte's Got His Own Firm Three years after stepping down as chairman and CEO of First Data, Charles Forte is using his own money and PE funds to acquire companies in the electronic payments and money transfer businesses. Forte says...

COMPLIANCE: Card Co's Day of Reckoning Hits IT; The CARD Act of 2009 means all systems are in play.(Plugged In)
July 1, 2009... Byline: Rebecca Sausner The new federal regulations overhauling credit card industry practices seemed radical, until President Obama signed a law in May that upped the ante in terms of timing and restrictions, and then in June proposed the...

TECHIES.(Plugged In)
July 1, 2009... Credit Suisse's former global head of IT research and development, Steve Yatko, has been named CTO and general partner of Cresting Wave, a provider of sales solutions for emerging tech firms. Mortgage and education finance service provider...

Message Board.
July 1, 2009... "It's like watching cold cuts go bad." Bill Berliner, consultant, on how e-monitoring alone won't improve collateral. "I can see an army of COBOL programmers taking a long time to pour through the regs and figure out how to code that...