John Adams

The global payment organization has deployed business intelligence software that lets members analyze the data tied to messages so they can measure performance and spot opportunity.

Emerging voice recognition technology dives into databases to come up with quick fixes and tailored cross-sales messages. Financial services adoption is slow, but analysts expect a quick pick up in the year ahead to improve service and reduce call times and costs.

Long wait times at branches and slow loan approvals have become unacceptable to the credit union, which is upgrading most of its IT via a Corelation platform.

Jack Henry's ProfitStars, FIS and Clairmail are all among the firms upgrading the look and feel of their web-accessed mobile banking offerings as the use of 'non native' apps continues to be strong.

By outsourcing large parts of its core, the Washington State community bank is removing more than a dozen different vendor relationships.

The firm believes the decline of the postal service and lingering cash-flow problems for businesses equal a robust opportunity for electronic billing services.

By placing credit scores on mobile devices, the credit management site is hoping to give shoppers another tool to use to gauge whether or not they should or can make a purchase.

The Massachusetts community bank's existing customers are getting older, new lending is stagnant and regs are around the corner. An analytics-driven rewards program, it is hoped, will help cure all three.

The firm's new Financial Stability Risk Score digs deeper into risk to attract lenders skittish in the rough economy, identifying the accounts with the highest risk of failure.

Lots of banks and nonbanks are trying to bring automation to the decidedly unautomated small business sector. Western Union's the latest to try with a new online payments engine.

The bank's core overhaul touches almost every area of the bank, from security to CRM to mobile.

The Australian institution's IdeaBank uses a Salesforce.com crowdsourcing engine to aggregate ideas for products and new innovation. It's a model that's not getting used a lot by banks, but shows promise.

Mobile is one of the biggest areas of IT investment in 2012, and at BECU new alerts and person-to-person payments are the best ways to make the devices a sticky portal to relationship expansion.

CIO Jim Brockett is leading a major new electronic document management initiative, in which documents across the entire enterprise will be digitized.

As Wells Fargo finishes a large upgrade to its fleet to enable single slot "no envelope" deposits, it's also expanding its use of customer relationship management and personal financial management via a link to centralized data analysis.

As compliance mandates pile up, the institution is migrating to a mix of automated document delivery, imaging and third party hosting to help it meet disclosure requirements while reduce paper clutter and labor costs. Even with the new technology, it's an uphill battle.

The FinTech Innovation Lab contest, in which new financial technology companies compete for the attention of big banks like Citigroup, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, is underway. The winners will receive some funding, but the real carrot is the chance to be mentored by bank tech execs and possibly have their new technology piloted by the banks.

Although business customers are loathe to give up checks, at least exceptions can be handled quicker through imaging.

The $430 million Indiana bank uses new mobile technology to battle large banks and lured ten percent of its customers to download a new app in three months.

Small banks like Arkansas' Citizens Bank are taking on core upgrades to reduce costs, consolidate relationships, increase speed to market, and obtain more tools to compete against large banks.