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Articles from
October 2006
Cover Story: The Innovator Awards |
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 For the second year in a row, Windows in Financial Services is honoring ten companies – five financial firms and five vendors – that have found innovative ways to harness the strength, flexibility and reliability of Microsoft technology. Microsoft has made a $20 billion R&D investment over the past few years to fuel innovation among its products and tools in an expanding array of categories.
The ten companies honored on the following pages have embraced these technologies and applied their own varied and creative approaches to using these tools to further their growth, build on their successes and empower their employees to better serve their customer base. By deploying technology ranging from 64-bit computing to Web services, data management and business intelligence, these companies have demonstrated that in the hands of savvy and capable companies technology can be used to modernize aging infrastructures, create new efficiencies and unlock new opportunities.
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People on the Move |
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Citi CIO Was an XP Early Adopter...
Avanade CIO and General Manager for the East are Microsoft Vets...
Artale is Resolute...
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Capitec Banks on South Africa’s Underserved |
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 Capitec Bank, a leader in developing new products for underserved
populations in the South African market, needs a lot of adaptability to
pursue its goal of making it easier for its one million-plus customers
to use the bank.
“The Capitec Bank business model in essence consists of a strong focus
on providing low-cost banking services with the emphasis on unique
product designs provided via the widest distribution possible,” said
Riaan Stassen, CEO of the bank. “The model allows for lower technical
demands on staff skills in a paperless environment, which is backed by
the innovative use of technology, such as biometric controls and
cameras.”
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Microsoft Re-Aligns Financial Services Group ‘To Get Closer to the Customer’ |
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 Microsoft’s U.S. Financial Services Group recently re-aligned its management team to bring its industry expertise in banking, capital markets and insurance directly in line with the sales organization – creating three vertical units geared toward driving industry-specific revenue in fiscal year 2007.
Driven by feedback from customers, technology partners and internal product groups, the group’s new charter will be to get closer to the industry sales teams and financial services customers. Led by Industry GM Tracy Issel, the group encompasses three new Industry Solution Director (ISD) roles, who will bring their extensive industry knowledge to bear on direct sales quotas, feedback to product groups on customer needs and answers to customers’ complex questions about enterprise deployments.
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Microsoft Partners at Sibos Support Efficient Processing And Improved Returns Through SWIFTNet |
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At SWIFT’s Sibos conference in Sydney, Microsoft and its key partners are addressing key concerns facing the global financial services industry such as growing top-line revenue and making better use of existing capital through improved treasury and cash management systems. To manage funds effectively, corporations need electronic connectivity between their banks and their treasury management systems.
Microsoft’s partners are providing solutions on BizTalk Accelerator for SWIFT. Basle II and money laundering have been recurring themes at Sibos, and Microsoft partners will demonstrate solutions they have built on SQL Server with links to the Microsoft Office System to deliver information directly to end users for risk management and regulatory compliance.
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Multi-Core Processing in Financial Sercices: |
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 New Heights in Power and Performance
Multi-core processors provide a significant improvement for the IT
infrastructure. It will provide more choice for server management
including consolidation, virtualization, space, density, power, and
cooling. One of the most significant business benefits is that the
multi-core processors allow for workloads to be moved off of more
expensive and larger platforms to multi-core-rich (and more
cost-effective) servers. For the CIO this will help lower cost of
computing and importantly position the future technology platform for a
more open computing environment, supporting the rewiring of the value
chain in financial services.
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Developing with Visual Studio for Insurance |
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 During the ACORD insurance conference in May, Insurity, a ChoicePoint company, announced a multi-year strategic alliance with Microsoft that would combine Insurity’s industry expertise with Microsoft’s .NET platform architecture and the Windows Server System.
WFS asked the Insurity development team to describe its progress in deploying its applications on the Microsoft platform. Below are the team’s responses, submitted jointly by Chris Kinkade, Insurity’s lead technology architect, and Mike Jensen, Insurity senior systems consultant. Both are members of Insurity’s Technology Architecture Review Board. The Microsoft perspective was supplied by Charles Fitcher, group manager, developer platform evangelists at Microsoft.
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Commerce Bank Automates Complex Customer Teller Services |
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 Although it had grown to more than 340 locations across Missouri, Kansas, and Illinois, Commerce Bancshares’ tellers were, until recently using old Sharp teller machines.
“The systems were manual, they weren’t online, but they were pretty fast,” said Charles Kim, executive vice president for retail administration at the bank. Over the years, the bank had developed some highly customized sales and service applications on its platform. Whenever it considered automating its front-line operations, the bank worried that new systems wouldn’t be capable of providing the scope it needed to meet all its customer requirements.
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Breckenridge Capital Advisors Finds a SWIFT Altenative to Fax |
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 One large custodian bank reported receiving 10,000 or more faxes
from investment managers on the last two days of the month, making a
mockery of the industry’s efforts over the years to become entirely
electronic, standards-based with computer-to-computer communications
untouched by error-producing human hands.
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Portfolio Managers Add Value by Tracking Market Volume |
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 What do portfolio managers do to retain existing clients, attract a greater share of their investment funds, and draw in new clients? They look for tools that will help them beat the market averages.
At Gustafson, Baxter Financial Services, Inc. in Columbus, OH, Bruce Baxter is using a number of market timing indicators in conjunction with aggressive mutual fund companies whose funds are designed for active investors.
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From the Editor: Standards Get Complicated - Really Complicated |
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 Investment bankers can always think up new product features faster than custodians and standards bodies can come up with message standards for them. That was the conclusion of a panel on corporate actions at SWIFT’s Sibos conference last year in Copenhagen. And as long as they can make money, the bankers are happy to leave the details to the bank’s back office, the custodians, or whoever else has to take responsibility for clearing and settlement.
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Willis Automates Lifecycle With New Agency Management System |
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 In 2005, Joe Plumeri, chairman and CEO of the global insurance brokerage Willis Group, commissioned an initiative focused on improving Willis’ operational capabilities in the US retail offices. The goal was to improve the company’s ability to provide superior client service while maintaining a keen focus on reduced operating costs. The existing operating procedures were varied and cumbersome: document creation was manually intensive, required multiple handoffs, and required users to re-key data into multiple systems.
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Natexis Banques Populaires Automates SWIFT Messaging |
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 A leader in the European financing market, Paris-based Natexis Banques Populaires is also at the forefront in the adoption of advanced technologies to automate financial transactions and processes. In its latest move, Natexis has begun using Itemfield in its New York operations to automate its SWIFT messages.
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A Slow and Deliberate Conversion to SWIFT |
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 It has been a year since Ed Barrie, senior product manager for Treasury at Microsoft Corporation, stood with SWIFT CEO Leonard Schrank at SIBOS in Copenhagen to announce that Microsoft would be using SWIFT for financial messaging with its banking partners. Since then, progress has been a little slower that he had anticipated while the potential impact looks to be much broader. Speaking to WFS over the summer, Barrie discussed what has happened since that announcement and how he has become an internal ambassador, explaining to groups across Microsoft how they can benefit from the company’s use of SWIFTNet.
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Tapping Into the $$ Benefits of Compliance |
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 With compliance spending expected to reach US $28 billion in 2007, financial institutions need to make sure that their compliance efforts are not just a necessary evil but an investment for the long term. There are a range of business benefits to be gained from sound compliance practices, including streamlined business processes, quality improvements, business intelligence, risk mitigation, and yes, lower costs.
We asked industry experts for their POV on how to tap into the business benefits of compliance and achieve that strategic edge.
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Crisis Management: Planning Beyond Earth, Wind & Fire |
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 While many professionals view crisis management as emergency response, business continuity or, as a business issue, a potential public relations calamity, true crisis management is multi-faceted and should be thoroughly integrated into your organization’s structure and operations.
To arrive at an effective level of crisis management requires a thorough internal analysis, strategic thinking and sufficient discussion – with everyone speaking the same language.
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