Bank Technology News articles from March 2004

Bank Technology News archives from March 2004

Electronic Security: E-Mail Gets a New Envelope.(Internet security management)
March 1, 2004... E-mail is at the heart of almost every ugly electronic security story that pops up these days, everything from fraud to ID theft, and wealth managers like New York Life Investment Management and Putnam are not about to let consumer...

E-Banking: South Financial's Single-Vendor Play.
March 1, 2004... Financial Fusion wins out over BankLink the hope for integration of Web banking across the enterprise has made Financial Fusion a big winner at The South Financial Group, which has tapped the tech vendor to provide a single Internet banking...

Compliance: E-Conversations Spark a Tech Rush.
March 1, 2004... Regs, litigation prompt new storage products thanks to recent high-profile court cases that centered on the rules governing how electronic communication is chronicled and stored, financial companies find themselves with yet another compliance...

Tower Holds On To Illusion of Autonomy. For Now.: To be sure, there's no scandal or suggestion of quid pro quo with the TowerGroup deal, but there is certainly an agenda on MasterCard's part.(ombudsmen)
March 1, 2004... Autonomy is at an all-time low in business these days. It's apparent on Wall Street, where investors were duped by some research analysts acting as mouthpieces for powerful investment bankers. And despite attempts by firms and governing bodies...

Removing Redundancies: Under Merrill's Wing: BluePhoenix: Licensing deal will sell enterprise IT modernization.
March 1, 2004... Old houses have often had their systems upgraded and added to multiple times over the years. The result can be a tangle of wires, some no longer needed, that is difficult to trace and understand. CIOs have a name for it: spaghetti. And...

....NewsMakers....NewsMakers....NewsMakers....(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... MasterCard Buys TowerGroup MasterCard Advisors, a unit of MasterCard International, has acquired TowerGroup from Reuters for a rumored $23 million in a strategy designed to strengthen its research expertise. TowerGroup, a Reuters operating...

ID Theft: For Fraud Victims, A Place to Turn: Wells-BITS pilot the Identity Theft Assistance Corp.
March 1, 2004... It's a dangerous world for identities. The Internet has revolutionized the business of stealing them, and organized crime groups find the pickings easy: Get one snippet of identification-a Social Security number, say, or even an address-and the...

Top Tech Deals.(Chevy Chase Trust)(Innovest Systems)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... 1. Chevy Chase Trust, which administers $10.4 billion in assets, has agreed to a seven-year contract with SEI Investments. 2. Fidelity National bought Aurum Technology and Sanchez Computer Associates to deepen its core banking and...

Alert Services Give Firms Lots of Choices: Financial Insights takes a look at trends and vendors.(information management )
March 1, 2004... Contemporary alert and notification services date to the mid-to-late '90s when advances in several technologies allowed financial institutions to deploy highly automated phone and e-mail-based outbound messaging systems. These outbound systems...

In On-Line Banking, Brazil Tops Neighbors: Chile's 35 percent broadband adoption makes it hot.
March 1, 2004... While only a fraction of Latin America's 475 million people is banking on-line regularly, Brazilian banks are surpassing their neighbors as the region's most advanced. And Chile is close behind. Though Internet penetration has escalating...

The Projects That Lie in the Shadows.(technology asset management)
March 1, 2004... The pressure on IT budgets over the past few years has forced companies to rethink the role of innovation in corporate strategy. Tom Pisello says it's also leading to an increase in a very different-and potentially very damaging-kind of...

Techies.(Appoitments)(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... Dan Fisher was promoted to CIO and evp at Community First Bankshares. He also serves as president and CEO of Community First Technologies, the company's technology subsidiary. The $5.5 billion bank also promoted Lynne Anstadt to svp of...

Message Board.(Brief Article)
March 1, 2004... "If they have management that stays current, they can be more nimble and more savvy than big banks can." Camden R. Fine president and CEO ICBA on the advantages of being a small bank with big technology needs. "Vendor management isn't...

By the Numbers.
March 1, 2004... The U.S. Card Industry is growing despite Ambivalent economic indicators, says a new Mercator study. But the industry is hardly in the clear, since fraud and charge-off levels are at record highs and growing. What's a bank to do? Improved...

A Fine IT Blueprint For Smaller Banks.(interview with president, Independent Community Bankers of America)(Interview)
March 1, 2004... As incoming president and CEO of the Independent Community Bankers of America, Camden R. Fine brings a wealth of banking and political experience. The native Missourian is a 20-year veteran of the Midwest Independent Bank in Jefferson City,...

Trading: Another Try at Rapid Clearing.(DTTC's inventory management system)
March 1, 2004... A new system from DTCC quickens the process, sparking new talk about straight-through processing the depository trust and clearing corp. has begun implementing a massive new computer system that it says will enhance the clearing and settlement...

A Tough 401(k) Market Portends a Tech Boom: Top players spent $132.5 million on technology in '03.
March 1, 2004... Not long ago, it seemed as if everyone wanted to jump onto the 401(k) bandwagon. But then came the economy's bust and all of the unfulfilled potential that went with it, leading providers to raise their tech spending and consider outsourcing to...

U.K.'s Tellermate Aims To Conquer U.S. Banks: Firm's clients already include Key Bank and Comerica.
March 1, 2004... For 20 years, u.k.-based tellermate has been installing its money counters at banks and retail stores all over the world except for the U.S., but it finally broke into the American financial services market last year by landing contracts with...

In Remittance Crackdown, Legitimate Firms Thrive.
March 1, 2004... If fighting terrorism and money laundering hinges on choking off flows of illegal money around the world, then the global crackdown on informal money-transfer systems is the front line. Perhaps the most well known of untraceable, informal...

The Other Victims of ID Fraud.
March 1, 2004... ID fraud is becoming more than just a nagging headache for consumers, 27.3 million of whom the Federal Trade Commission says have been victims in the last five years. Now the problem is morphing into a throbbing migraine for financial services...

Trading: New Tools for CyberTraders.
March 1, 2004... Trey Robinson shies away from the term "daytrader," saying Charles Schwab's CyberTrader is designed for a much wider range of what he calls "active traders." Either way, short-term electronic trading is returning, and an array of new tools is...

With e-Payroll Manager, CIBC Touts e-Compensation.
March 1, 2004... Cibc is applying the same kind of cross-business strategy being pursued industry-wide with CRM platforms to its payroll operation, deploying technology that helps plan compensation on-line. A key component of upgrading HR functions is...

Caterpillar Offers Kinetic-Energy Backup Power Unit.
March 1, 2004... Whether it's called business-continuity planning or, for the more dramatically inclined, disaster recovery, bank executives have been thinking a lot lately about how to keep the lights on and the data moving when the power goes out. Of course,...

Oswego Seizes IT Control After Shifting Its Focus.
March 1, 2004... Outsourcing is grabbing the headlines, but there's also a lot of firms choosing to keep their tech operations in-house. And some, like community bank Oswego County National, are reversing earlier decisions to outsource. The Upstate New...

Managing Risk Across Bank Lines.
March 1, 2004... Risk mitigation has long been part of the culture of financial institutions-with lending getting particular attention. After all, lending is based on numbers. Risk ratings, overall portfolio performance, concentrations, rate spreads, fees,...

Value and the IT Arms Race.(Information Technology)
March 1, 2004... Information technology has now been integrated into most companies' basic business platforms. Indeed, the automation phase-systematizing tasks that were once done manually-has ended, and the connectivity phase-linking internal systems and...

How to Get Ahead of the Curve on CRA Compliance.
March 1, 2004... A bank's outstanding CRA rating -the grade for how well the bank followed the Community Reinvestment Act-used to be the mark of excellence a CRA professional sought out. With increasing pressure from top management to enhance profitability and...