If you don’t know where you are going, even the best technology will have a hard time getting you there. North Shore Credit Union’s Fred Cook understands this well, and the CIO, recognized as a top innovator last year, has made it his business to be clear-sighted about where the business is headed.

At Constitution Corporate Federal Credit Union (CCFCU), the migration away from paper is an ongoing process. In 1999, CCFCU implemented an image-based item-processing platform with the help of Atlanta-based VSoft and so far has seen returns in increased efficiency and better customer service. Every year it takes advantage of new features and functions to yield further improvements.

With more than $1.8 billion in assets, CCFCU is a wholesale financial institution that provides investment and correspondent services to about 200 credit unions in the US, mainly in Connecticut.

Insurance claims processing has a reputation for being both time consuming and error-prone with countless manual steps. But through a series of initiatives using .NET technology, CUNA Mutual Group (CMG) has been progressively automating this process, resulting in better accuracy, faster claims decisions, and now, integration between the claims process and new call centers.

Based in Madison, Wisconsin, CUNA is a leading financial services provider to credit unions and their members around the world. With assets of more than $10 billion, CUNA holds relationships with 5,000 credit unions and 40 million credit union members.

The Basel II Accord may reduce risks for banks, but the regulation is complicated and time consuming. In search of a global compliance solution, The Bank of New York partnered with Financial Architects (FinArch) based in Belgium.

For nearly two decades, banks have had to set aside 8 percent of risk-weighted assets to offset credit risk to meet the requirements of the Basel Accord. The regulations have been revised a couple of times to include minimum regulatory capital requirements to offset market risk. Now, the measurement of operational risk adds a new level of complexity to the regulation.

The mortgage technology industry assesses the opportunities the current mortgage crisis presents for re-shaping and rebuilding the industry.

There may be many culprits toward whom the finger of blame could be pointed for the mortgage crisis that has been grabbing headlines for months on end. Some blame regulators and investors who may have exhibited lax oversight; others point to overzealous borrowers and lenders, looking to take advantage of the frenzy caused by low interest rates. The soon-to-be-emeritus editor of Mortgage Technology magazine Scott Kersnar holds technology partly to blame for the subprime mortgage mess. Automation made the barrier to entry low and fostered chronic over-capacity, he wrote in a recent editorial.

It can be easy to forget that the ATM channel is the most heavily used touchpoint by consumers.  It has been deployed by financial institutions around the globe for decades to extend their footprint.  While it was the first 24/7 channel and is often viewed as a mere cash dispenser, the ATM is now evolving into a new era of increased functionality.

Many ATMs now run under Microsoft Windows which allows for all kinds of advancements, particularly in the area of the user interface.  Today, consumers enjoy a much more user-friendly graphical interface that often includes touchscreens.  The Windows environment permits much richer interfaces and content, plus the ability to personalize and streamline the screens to each user’s preference for language, withdrawal amount, etc.

• Microsoft Ushers In A New Era of Convenience and Functionality
• Integrating ATMs with Other Self-Service Channels
• Moving ATMs Toward a More Full Service Environment
• Unbundling to Lower TCO and Maximize Profitability of ATMs

Bankers around the globe are under increasing pressure to drive profits and reduce costs while still investing in technology solutions that help increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. Finding this balance is difficult at best, but our panelists will provide some sage advice to retail bankers who are seeking to strike this balance. Plus, these experts will give us their views on what are the biggest challenges to meeting these goals, and discuss which technologies show the most promise for delivering short-term profits, as well as for long-term growth.

Just seven years ago, Lubbock, TX-based Texas Tech Federal Credit Union (TTFCU) had about $30 million dollars in assets and only a handful of employees operating out of space rented from Texas Tech University. After it changed its charter in 2001 to include students in its field of membership, the credit union nearly doubled in size to more than 10,000 members and around $50 million in total assets. It now has 20 employees in three locations on the university campus and it plans to open an off-campus branch in the next couple of years. The credit union is also one of the university’s largest student loan lenders.

What can a financial institution do if it’s running out of storage capacity? Brannen Banks, a bank holding company for seven banks in Florida, has found Windows-based disk partitioning software to be a solution that’s highly effective as well as economical.

With increasing numbers of computers to support, and more and more files on hand, companies in every industry are fending off a storage crunch. But banks and other financial firms can be particularly prone to the capacity pinch, due to factors ranging from mergers and acquisitions to regulatory pressures around document storage.

Glenview State Bank, an independently owned full-service lender for individuals and businesses in Chicago’s North Shore and environs with $885 million in assets under management, needed to upgrade its mortgage loan origination software. The old system’s vendor was phasing it out and pushing Glenview toward another solution that “would require a lot of work to implement,” recalls Bill Campbell, executive vice president of the Glenview, IL-based bank.

Customer service and client retention have always preoccupied financial services firms, which must respond quickly and precisely to changing client needs. In an industry facing the challenge of commoditized offerings for a population with more choices than ever before, exceptional service is critical.

Whether transacting or accounting, the financial industry relies heavily on data to service clients; without current and reliable information at their fingertips, account managers can’t do their jobs. Gathering this data – account balances, investment offerings, time-sensitive opportunity information – within a firm has always been a challenge. Studies show that up to 30 percent of an account executive’s time is spent searching for data – time that could be much better spent on clients themselves.

• Ten More Spanish Banks Select SunGard’s BancWare
• Jefferies Prime Brokerage Partners With Linedata
• IP Commerce Pushes Reseller Program
• Microsoft Buys Parlano
• Formicary Becomes Microsoft Certified Partner
• Brazil’s Mellon Serviços Financeiros Selects Charles River
• Microsoft Aids South African Startup
• XSP Partners with Web Services Integration Limited to Offer Withholding Tax Reclamation
• SlaterLabs Signs Two-Year Support Contract with Microsoft
• Wolters Kluwer Ships Microsoft .NET Version of Expere
• Clear2Pay Delivers Open Payments Framework on Microsoft Platforms
• Fiserv-CheckFree Aims for Both Core Processing and Online Lead

Established in 2004, the investment management firm Clearbrook Financial prides itself on its embrace of a philosophy that is still new to the financial services industry: transparency. In executing that philosophy it has formed strong partnerships with financial technology vendors.

For one, Clearbrook uses CheckFree Corp.’s APL-based products (named after an array of programming language dubbed A Programming Language) across business functions running the gamut from operations to performance reporting.

Fierce competition in the banking industry makes it tough for new banks to gain a foothold in the market. But Rogers, AR-based ANB Financial played it smart by leveraging Jack Henry and Microsoft technology to support its growth strategy, increase efficiency and deliver superior customer service.

ANB Financial was founded in 1994 with a mere $25 million in assets and one location. Thirteen years later, the bank has about $2 billion in assets and more than 300 employees spread over several branches in Arkansas, Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming. In addition to offering a full range of traditional banking services, ANB Financial is working to establish a broker-dealer and a hedge fund based in Chicago to cater to its customers’ investment needs.

Founded in 1997, CNLBancshares, Inc’s (CNLBank) mission is to be the largest independent bank headquartered in Florida, while being recognized as a bank of choice for middle market businesses, commercial real estate, developers, home builders and high-net-worth individuals. By partnering with Harland Financial Solutions, the bank has leveraged its core processing technology to not only differentiate itself from its competitors, but also to turn its mission into reality.

Back in 2003, CNLBank was the 46th largest commercial bank headquartered in Florida with $100 million in assets. By the end of 2006, it had risen in the ranks to #11 and had organically grown to about $1.3 billion in assets. In fact, the bank has grown at a CAGR of 60 percent for the last five years, and its earnings have grown at a CAGR of more than 100 percent. CNLBank now has separately chartered banks in some of Florida’s major metropolitan markets, including Jacksonville, Orlando and Southwest Florida. CNLBank plans to enter additional markets as opportunities become available.

HCL Technologies is a $1.4 billion global technology consulting and IT services company founded in India in 1991, as a division of HCL Enterprise, a $4 billion organization and one of India’s oldest IT companies. Now one of India’s leading businesses, HCL Technologies employs over 42,000 professionals in 86 offices located in 17 countries in Asia, Europe, and North America. HCL has global partnerships with several Fortune 1000 firms including leading IT and technology firms (see www.hcltech.com and www.hcl.in).

The advantages of outsourcing complex technical tasks such as creating software-led IT solutions, remote infrastructure management services and business process outsourcing is now widespread, and its advantages are well known. HCL has delivered solutions for corporate sectors as diverse as financial services, retail and consumer, life sciences and healthcare, hi-tech and manufacturing, aerospace, automotive, telecom, and media and entertainment.

Visionaries in the payments industry discuss connectivity, cost, standards and efficiency.

By Paul Allen

Automation and efficiency are evergreen topics within the financial services industry. But in the payments sector in Europe these forces are being given extra impetus by the launch in 2010 of the Single European Payments Area (SEPA).

SEPA was hatched in response to demands for a single Europe-wide market where cross-border transactions would be as cheap as they are domestically. But this means banks, corporates and other payments participants are having to introduce automation into their processes wherever possible in order to bring down costs. Add in the normal competitive pressures that face industry players worldwide anyway and the upshot is a huge drive towards automated connectivity and straight-through processing.

In light of this, Windows in Financial Services asked four industry participants from different parts of the value chain what they see as the key issues facing market players at present, and the roles their organizations can play in the environment’s evolution.

Although most financial services institutions have made inroads into Business Intelligence (BI), there still is some way to go before the full promise of BI is fulfilled and it is embedded in the enterprise, used by all relevant employees. Microsoft for its part is doing everything it can to speed this process up. Its fast track: Excel.

Excel, used by a large portion of what Microsoft estimates are 500 million company users who have Office licenses, enables Microsoft to deliver pervasive BI and Performance Management to everyone at a fraction of the cost of other BI tools.
Full Introduction...

• Microsoft: One Step Closer to Making Business Intelligence Ubiquitous
• SoftArtisans OfficeWriter: Bridging the Gap between Microsoft Office and SQL Server
• Corporate Modeling: Adding Analytics to BI