Fiserv Inc. has agreed to provide Sanwa Bank California with technology to help expand its correspondent check clearing and settlement business.
The deal, whose financial terms were not released, essentially gives $7.7 billion asset Sanwa the ability to take over processing for former customers of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, which recently said it would cease to provide clearing and settlement services to financial institutions.
"This is a new business opportunity for us," said Doug Stewart, executive vice president at the Sanwa Bank Ltd. unit, which is based in San Francisco.
Sanwa and Fiserv declined to discuss the check volumes or numbers of customers expected to come to Sanwa as part of the deal.
Correspondent bank customers of the Home Loan bank are not obliged to become customers of Sanwa.
Gary Curley, a senior vice president, said the Home Loan bank wants "to focus on our core business of making credit available to our shareholder customers.''
The 12 regional banks of the Federal Home Loan Bank System provide short-term loans to savings institutions.
As part of the Fiserv deal, Sanwa will get new mainframe computer links to Fiserv and to correspondent bank customers.
Mr. Stewart said these links will let the bank Sanwa transfer correspondent customers to its systems "as if nothing has changed except that we become the settlement point."
