Banc One Corp. and Crestar Financial Corp. have renewed their outsourcing contracts with SEI Corp. for trust accounting.
Terms of the deals were not disclosed. Bank One, Columbus, Ohio, signed a four-year deal for SEI to process 64,000 employee benefit and personal trust accounts, which will grow to 75,000 accounts by the end of the year, representing a $115 billion-asset business.
Crestar signed a five-year deal for all 18,000 accounts it manages, including corporate accounts. The Richmond, Va.-based bank operates a $30 billion trust business.
A bank's trust department manages assets, collects principal and interest payments, invests cash between payment dates, and disburses funds to pay principal and interest for owners of trust accounts.
SEI, a Wayne, Pa.-based technology and consulting firm, handles the core trust and securities accounting, customer reporting, and management information systems for over a third of the nation's largest 100 banks in the trust business.
"SEI has demonstrated that the company delivers quality products and services that are exactly in line with both our long- and short- term needs," said John G. Alexander, president of operations for Banc One Trust Technology Group.
"Their commitment to future technology development is pro-active and anticipates our future requirements," he added.
The contract renewals follow a recent test that occurred between SEI, Andersen Consulting, Chicago, and Fleet Financial Group Inc., Providence, R.I.
The project, through software modifications and systems investments of over $1 million, tripled Fleet's existing data base of over 40,000 trust accounts.
The test was conducted to prove that SEI's system could handle such large processing loads. It processed the simulated 126,000-account data base in under 11 hours,
"No one else in the industry comes close to that," said Rick Lieb, SEI's executive vice president. "We've demonstrated an unbelievable core competency in merging trust departments and being able to process large numbers of accounts."
