Bank Technology News articles from March 2003

Bank Technology News archives from March 2003

COMMERCIAL LENDING: Putting Sales Umph Into Banking.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... If you ask umpqua bank's Mike Paul, president of private clients services for the Portland, OR-based institution, Baker Hill's recent acquisition of sales automation firm Inspired Design is long overdue. The deal, completed in February, will...

MULTI-LINGUAL WEB SITES: The Web Gets Multicultural: Banks go on-line to nab stateside Latinos.
March 1, 2003... While seemingly every bank in the u.s. claims they plan to better serve the country's growing minorities-specifically the Hispanic community-it's going to take more than offering wire transfers and playing ethnic music in branches to win...

RETURN ON INVESTMENT: iValue Eyes Shareholder Value: Linking IT buys to investors' response.(banking information technology )(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... A bedeviling problem for bank executives contemplating technology buys has always been measuring the value created by such investments. While in the rush to implement new gadgetry in the 1990s these deficiencies were often overlooked, and...

Firing Line: AML Tech Can Spot Patterns, Detect Odd Behavior: Technology hasn't necessarily made criminals smarter, but it's given them faster, more anonymous ways to operate.
March 1, 2003... The drive to detect and thwart money laundering today is as problematic as the crime itself. Consumer and privacy advocates are up in arms over touchy issues surrounding the Patriot Act, an amendment to the Bank Secrecy Act. While some...

....NewsMakers....NewsMakers....NewsMakers..........(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... No R&R for the R&C IDC got the ball rolling by snagging Meridien Research late last year, and the consolidation of the industry's cerebrals continues. This time the aggressor is Forrester Research who plans to snap up former rival R&C firm...

ATM NETWORKS: An ATM with a Room to Sublet: Key's "Agent Bank" opens the field for small institutions.
March 1, 2003... It's no longer enough to just have a network of ATMs. These days, you've got to have a plan, too. With not just banks, but credit unions and convenience stores continuing to boost the country's total number of ATMs, money center and regional...

TopTech Deals.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... 1 El paso Area Teachers Federal Credit Union has chosen Harland Financial Solutions to provide a broad range of products and services. 2 Fiserv has agreed to offer electronic bill payment services through iPay to its financial institution...

CRM TECHNOLOGY: Managing to Nab New Leads: Vendors unveil a new generation of lead management.
March 1, 2003... Event-based marketing tools from CRM vendors can drastically improve on traditional methods of monitoring customer activities. But in order to be effective, these solutions must be coupled with tools that help bankers act on the data being...

LATIN AMERICA: Big Latin Technology Bet Gets Another Shot: Banks below the border get ready for a second go.(Industry Overview)
March 1, 2003... During the go-go '90s technology seemed to be leading economies around the world into new areas of productivity and profitability, and it was hard to find a sector of the global markets that didn't seem to benefit. Expert opinion had it...

Unibanco Stirs Up the Wireless Pot.
March 1, 2003... Unibanco, one of Brazil's largest banks with $73 billion in assets, is staking its claim as a pioneer in wireless banking in Latin America. Of its 2.5 million customers, 600,000 bank on-line, and 30,000 are mobile or wireless bankers. Its...

Issuers Jockey for Position in Brazilian Debit Dash.
March 1, 2003... Brazil may be the leading economy in Latin America, but credit cards still can't seem to find a place in consumers' wallets. While it's still a developing nation, only the super-affluent can qualify for credit. As such, debit is quickly...

What's Driving Tech Strategy? A Tight, Thin Wallet.
March 1, 2003... Financial institutions have become so unwilling to spend that even ideas designed to save money, such as overseas outsourcing, are getting some extra scrutiny. Finextra says more than 70 percent of the world's banks cite cost reduction...

Internet Technology's Changing of the guard.(Industry Overview)
March 1, 2003... It's that way with evolution: little things happen here and there, and then one day you look up and, oh! The Ice Age has started. That's the way things are going in 2003 for Internet banking technology players. Out are most of the top...

Hackers Struggling To Get Ahead.
March 1, 2003... Kevin Mitnick's wild ride from busting through firewalls to helping firms build them recently took an ironic detour when someone broke into his own company's Web site o harm, no foul, said company officials-called Defensive Thinking. But an...

Message BOARD.
March 1, 2003... "We usually see a fourth quarter budget flush-use it or lose it. We didn't see any flush this year." Barb Gomolski, research director, Gartner Group on firms not spending their full IT budgets. "They're looking for something besides a...

TECHIES.
March 1, 2003... John McKinley is out and John Cummings is on the way in as the new technology leader at Merrill Lynch. Cummings, a 21-year Merrill vet and recent COO of the firm's Global Technology and Services Group, is taking over the reins and will serve as...

By the Numbers.(Industry Overview)
March 1, 2003... Gone are the days of insurance agents sitting at kitchen tables with clients to talk business. With insurance companies selling more bank products, not only has such a delivery model become impractical, but it's also become too expensive, says...

Tye $pots the Real From the Fake.( managing director of Leonhard Kurz & Company)
March 1, 2003... The Web has sprouted a whole new class of crooks and crime, and that's deservedly garnered lots of attention over the past decade, particularly during the last couple of years. But it's worth noting that for decades financial firms have faced...

DEBT MANAGEMENT: Consolidation's Got New Tools: Tech companies and financial institutions are lining up to help consumers control their Herculean debt.(such as BancWare and Siebel Finance)(Industry Overview)
March 1, 2003... The American consumer has finally maxed out. Personal bankruptcies are on the rise and consumer spending is dwindling. Write-offs and reserves for bad credit card loans are slowly increasing each quarter. The average American has 6.5 credit...

Exchanges Electronically Exploring Their Options.(Options Linkage Authority)
March 1, 2003... The five U.S. options exchanges were electronically linked for the first time on January 31, and while officials say customers are unlikely to notice much of a difference, the linkage will have a significant impact on the way exchange...

Breaking the Big Boys' Grip on Managed Accounts.(Bank of New York-Metavante service )
March 1, 2003... Asset management professionals and the firms that pay them have separately managed accounts (SMAs) on the brain, and for good reason. The tax friendly instrument is benefiting from an array of innovative technology advancements and...

Banks dig in along the war's new front line in a high stakes bid to stop money laundering.(Industry Overview)
March 1, 2003... In the 1980s, Kenneth rRjock helped drug dealers stash millions in offshore accounts, often dressing up as a tourist and personally taking suitcases of cash to the Caribbean for deposit. But for him, money laundering was never about the money....

Knowledge Management's Power Trip.(Industry Overview)
March 1, 2003... The knowledge curve for financial institutions has never been steeper. And that's led to a sweeping realignment of technology, information and resources at giant firms like Wells Fargo, Merrill Lynch and Bank of America down to small credit...

Wireless: A U.S. Boom Lays in Wait.
March 1, 2003... On a frigid Stockholm afternoon, the lanky Joakim de Leuve is up at the marker board of an anonymously decorated conference room, illustrating the adoption of mobile banking as the SEB Bank tech labcoat warms up to one of his favorite topics....

Frontiers.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... 1. JP Morgan Chase is an early user of an Egenera product that harnesses idle computer power for number-crunching tasks in front- and middle-office functions. 2. Alerter has developed a self-titled instant messaging product that provides...

Bank Allies Say California Hacking Law Goes Too Far.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... Early last year, hackers broke into the California state comptroller's payroll database and sifted through 265,000 employee records, accessing everything from names and addresses to bank account information and social security numbers. Weeks...

For Answers, Wells Goes with Virtual Handholding.(Wells Fargo offers Commercial Electronic Office service)
March 1, 2003... Answer a customer's question once about how to perform a specific transaction on a bank's Web site and they'll probably be back soon with another question. Most likely it'll be something basic. But show them how to perform the transaction, as...

SECURITY: Finding Hackers Before a Strike.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... There's a running joke at a security consulting firm in New York that intrusion detection systems should come with an audio component similar to AOL e-mail. Only instead of delivering the classic "You've got mail" line, the intrusion...

VIRUS PREVENTION: Preparing for a Sequel To the Sinister Slammer: Banks ponder security before another worm turns.
March 1, 2003... Most of the financial institutions hit by the SQL Slammer worm in late January won't go so far as to say the virus affected their operations "severely." They'll admit that they were hit hard and caught off guard. But they weren't completely...

Degrees of Disaster Recovery.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2003... Hot, warm or cool? This has become the question of the day for corporate decision-makers. But while the topic of temperature in a corporate environment might once have referred to HVAC settings, today it involves a far more serious subject:...

Giving Merchants Broader Payments Possibilities.
March 1, 2003... Savings and loan organizations and banks face a seemingly insurmountable challenge: how to continue offering merchants the personal relationships unique to small banks while retaining the prices, choices and flexibility that allow them to...

Security Beyond the Bank's Walls.
March 1, 2003... Security lies at the heart of the covenant between banks and their customers. The business of banks is offering safe environments into which customers entrust their precious assets ot long ago, security meant only locking down a bank's...