Bank Technology News articles from October 2003

Bank Technology News archives from October 2003

Portals: Additions Expected At JPMorgan Site: iVault to be Integrated In early '04 in 'Access'.
October 1, 2003... JPMorgan treasury services plans to integrate its iVault image-archive product into its new portal, Access, in early 2004 in a move designed to make the site one of the most comprehensive Web-enabled corporate offerings available clients...

Customer Service: Cus Dive Into Aggregation: GTE, Patelco aided by powerful CRM systems.
October 1, 2003... Thanks to gte federal credit union's new customer relationship management system, employees have easy access to everything there is to know about a member's dealings with GTE. But now, as GTE prepares to launch its new account-aggregation and...

Merchant Cards: Untapped Market In Specialty Cards: Do banks overlook lucrative segment?(Industry Overview)
October 1, 2003... Banks are ignoring a huge market-prepaid, loyalty, gift and payroll cards for merchants-now dominated by credit card giants MasterCard International and Visa. "Banks are missing the boat here," says Gary Cawthorne, managing partner for...

Firing Line: Good Grief, This Idea Has Been a Long Time Coming: The larger the bank, the more sense grid computing makes, and the more efficiency it yields. This is something all CIOs need to consider as they look at a networked enterprise.
October 1, 2003... Call it oversight or comfort with the status quo, but some of the best ideas to hit banking's technology scene-grid computing, for example-are so obvious it's almost alarming. But in the hyper-frenzied world of finance these days, inertia in...

Compliance: Vendors Trade On Enforcement: Patriot Act authentication rules become official this fall.
October 1, 2003... Federal "Know Your Customer" regulations are now in force, and tech vendors are lining up with products that not only aim to keep financial companies compliant, but provide benefits in tangential areas such as risk management and preventing...

....NewsMakers....NewsMakers....NewsMakers....
October 1, 2003... Low Card Rates Lure Many Few credit card users cancel or close introductory-rate card accounts when the interest-rate term expires, according to a recent study by Synergistics Research Corp. One out of 10 card holders interviewed accepted at...

Anti-money Laundering: ABN Amro, Mantas Ink Key AML Deal: Software eyed for 3,000 branches globally by 2006.(installs Mantas Behavior Detection Platform )
October 1, 2003... Mantas just landed its largest implementation contract, inking a deal with Dutch financial services giant ABN Amro to install its anti-money-laundering software in 3,000 branches in 66 countries. Mantas began running in the bank's New York...

Top Tech Deals.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... 1. Fiserv has acquired the assets of Unisure, a provider of reinsurance software and related services, in a deal that will add $5 million in annual revenue for Fiserv. 2. Emptoris purchased Zeborg in a deal that will expand Emptoris'...

E-Bank Client Counts Soar, But Questions Persist.(Industry Overview)
October 1, 2003... The number of people who are banking on-line has gone through the roof since the collapse of the so-called Internet economy. Since fall 2001, on-line banking has jumped by nearly 80 percent nationwide, according to a research report from...

Wachovia Moves Card Processing to Visa USA, NYCE.(New York Cotton Exchange)
October 1, 2003... A positive development for visa USA and First Data subsidiary NYCE is a negative development for Concord EFS. Wachovia has selected Visa USA and NYCE over Concord to run its debit card and ATM transactions. Other large banks may soon make...

Amex Leads as Cash Machines Come to Market.
October 1, 2003... As atms have become more expensive to maintain while bringing in less revenue, some financial companies are considering outsourcing their ATM operations or selling off their machines. And as advanced ATMs ratchet up costs further, more ATM...

The Big Banks Still Churn Out a Ton of Paper.
October 1, 2003... They send credit card statements through e-mail, arrange for all kinds of bill payment and post all the information a checking account holder could want on a central Web site. But most big banks are still chunking out millions of paper...

Banks Have Far to Go on Accessibility for the Blind.
October 1, 2003... While big banks are making strides to become more accessible to the blind by rolling out talking ATMs and Braille and large-print materials, most banks make it nearly impossible for them to manage their finances on the Internet. Wells Fargo and...

Investing to Keep From Having to Spend: Tower: most IT spending is for cost-cutting technology.
October 1, 2003... The next couple years won't be a good time to be looking for a job in a bank's IT department; on the other hand, it won't be a bad time to sell new technologies to banks that help take costs out of the business-like the need to hire more...

For Web Ads, View-Throughs are What Matter.(Industry Overview)
October 1, 2003... Finance spends more than any other sector on Web ads and partnerships, shelling out more than $1.2 billion for on-line advertising in 2002 and $430 million through April of this year, according to TNS Media Intelligence-CMR. As companies pour...

MasterCard's SideCard Can Ride on a Key Ring.
October 1, 2003... Mastercard international has launched MasterCard SideCard, a mini payments card that fits on a key ring. The card is a companion to its traditional-sized cards and works in swipe terminals at the point of sale. The SideCard is the first...

Odds & Ends.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... Commercial Federal Bank of Omaha has chosen Corillian Corp. of Portland, OR, for its retail banking Web site for real-time account access. The system replaces the bank's "memo-posting" system. Implementation involved five vendors, including...

The Trip to India Just Became Lots Easier.
October 1, 2003... Lots of American companies, financial sector included, are looking to save tons of money by jobbing out information technology to India. While the jury is still out as to how such moves will ultimately fare, the U.S. Department of Commerce is...

Techies.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... Paul Phillips has been tapped as global head of technology in investment banking for Bank of America Securities. Phillips will be based in San Francisco and had been the global head of software investment banking at Goldman Sachs since 1992....

Message Board.
October 1, 2003... "In my view, unless I see it, it doesn't exist." John Bourbon, ceo,kys-os on the need for firms to have an authentication system that flawlessly vouches for a customer's identity. "It's not easy for people who have just moved to the...

By The Numbers.
October 1, 2003... Check image archive and image access and viewing are certain to be among the hottest topics in consumer banking in 2003 and 2004, as consumers demand these services from their banks-and as banks seek another way to trim costs. A new Unisys...

On-Line Fraud Fight: How It Has Evolved.
October 1, 2003... The Federal Trade Commission says 27.3 million Americans have been victims of identity theft in the last five years, including 9.9 million people in the last year alone, costing companies $48 billion and consumers $5 billion. Gartner Inc. warns...

Investment Services: BIG Launches Analytic Tool: ATACS allows independent banks to run with the big boys with their own sophisticated modeling.
October 1, 2003... Banc investment group, the broker-dealer unit of San Francisco-based Pacific Coast Bankers' Bankshare, is bringing investment analytics to the masses. Well, to the masses of its 579 member banks, thrifts and credit unions. About 40 member...

Corporate Trust Buyouts Need Scale and Tech: JPMorganChase is among the firms playing it big.
October 1, 2003... Two corporate trust buyouts in the last year underscore the growing importance of size and technology in what's sometimes considered a backwater industry, say market participants. But even with a solid growth model, companies in the...

Grid.
October 1, 2003... Have financial services firms captured the Holy Grail of technology? That's what some observers say as firms implement grid computing-an architecture that helps harness all the computer power across an enterprise. For Schwab's David Dibble,...

Banks Bone Up, Gear Up for Check 21 And Beyond: Imminent passage brings education and urgency to capture, archive and exchange images.
October 1, 2003... The expected enactment of Check 21 legislation this fall is prompting banks large and small to ramp up plans to deploy not only imaging and archiving systems, but those twin dream schemes of distributed capture from end points such as ATMs and...

Automated Underwriting Gets More Automated: To keep pace with the largest banks, smaller institutions are putting more into in e-decisioning.
October 1, 2003... Cole Taylor Bank is finding out there's a lot more to automated underwriting spitting out credit scores. Sure, the numerical grade that is used to determine credit worthiness for mortgages, credit cards and consumer and business loans is...

Replacing Message-in-a-Bottle Trading Practices.
October 1, 2003... Web-messaging has become the missing link in straight-through processing for asset managers who typically scribble urgent trade messages on bits of paper and fax the updates to their brokers. Now, Brown Brothers Harriman has added a...

River City Bank Adopts Merchant eSolution.
October 1, 2003... He was probably just thinking out loud, but when one of River City Bank's merchant customers tossed out the idea of downloading his credit card sales information into his accounts receivables statements, River City decided it was an idea worth...

Merchant View.
October 1, 2003... Merchant eSolution's on-line processing service offers a sample main menu ach link contains several options. For instance, the merchant call-tracking link lets banks pull up a list of all service calls made or just those customers that need...

Mutual Funds: Q Middle Hits Center Stage.(from Comprehensive Software Systems)
October 1, 2003... Comprehensive Software Systems is riding the investors' rights wave, helped along by consumer-advocate politicians and mutual fund reform. The company began selling its latest software, Q Middle, in August to institutional investors, and CEO...

Pegasystems' Revolution In Card Dispute Process: PegaCARD SmartDispute aims to trim chargeback costs.
October 1, 2003... One out of every 1,000 credit card charges is fraudulent-as is one out of every 50 Internet transactions-figures that have risen 50 percent between 1996 and 2002. But for Pegasystems, this an opportunity, not a problem. The provider of...

Metastorm Thunders In Crowded BPM Space: Version 6 of e-Work takes off like Hurricane Isabel.
October 1, 2003... Metastorm hopes the latest release of its business-process management software will unleash a flood of admirers in the financial services space. Version 6 of e-Work promises to help organizations to more effectively execute business...

BellSouth Offers Banks One-Stop Phone Service.
October 1, 2003... Beginning last january 1, bellSouth was the first Baby Bell to roll out long distance services across its entire footprint. Since then, it has been aggressively courting companies-financial institutions in particular, given the banking center...

Citizens Adopts INEA's Financial Forecasting Tool.
October 1, 2003... Keeping track of how well technology expenditures perform is a big job, and an important one when the return on every dollar is under a microscope. For Michigan-based Citizens Banking Corp., that effort is leading to a major automation project....

Web Services Means New Challenges.
October 1, 2003... Web-based corporate electronic banking systems, installed at great cost by banks over the past few years, may soon disappear as new Internet technology binds banks and their customers even closer together. The corporate electronic banking...

Real Time is No Luxury for Small Business Owner.
October 1, 2003... Pat is a young entrepreneur celebrating his first anniversary as a small business owner. His friend Ed is a CFO at one of the nation's largest corporations. Both do their business banking at the same national bank, but both have different needs...

Why a Cyclical Value Approach to SCM Makes Sense.
October 1, 2003... Financial institutions' IT investment priorities have shifted categorically over the past 18 months. In the age of the tech bubble, strategic IT decisions centered on emerging technologies that promised to turn the financial services industry...

The Magic of Blending e-Learning, Classic Training.
October 1, 2003... Amidst the feverish technology boom of the mid-1990s, prognosticators predicted the imminent demise of the corporate classroom and the meteoric rise of e-learning. Business leaders, long skeptical of training, cheered the predictions, noting...

Business Adoption of On-Line Payments Rise.
October 1, 2003... A substantial number of businesses are adopting on-line payment systems to improve cash flow and reduce paperwork. The process typically begins when customers complete a check authorization form on-line or fax a paper version of the form to the...

Expectations Unfulfilled On E-Billing, E-Payments: As roadblocks persist, adoption of both have been slow.
October 1, 2003... Since the arrival of on-line financial services, billers and financial institutions have awaited the adoption breakthrough predicted by many industry analysts. The promises of electronic bill payment and electronic bill payment and...

Is Check 21 Set to Be A Blessing or a Curse?: Dangers abound. Just check out proposed tech vendors.
October 1, 2003... The check clearing for the 21st Century Act, also known as Check 21, is one of the most radical changes to hit the check processing industry in 40 years. On average, financial institutions handle a check 26 times, and returned checks are...

Get Ready for Secure Web-Based Delivery: E-mailing "sensitive" documents is next breakthrough.
October 1, 2003... Banks no longer have to send sensitive financial documents via regular or overnight mail, thanks to the emergence of innovative secure on-line delivery services. Meeting all regulatory guidelines for both security and non-repudiation, these...

The Skinny On Live-Scan Systems.
October 1, 2003... To save time and money, financial institutions are rapidly moving to electronic submission of fingerprint cards to process employee background checks. When transmitted electronically, an institution can get results from the FBI in four to six...