Edify Upgrades SoftwareFor Interactive Banking

Edify Corp. has enhanced its interactive banking software to what it says is the best level of customization available.

With Electronic Banking System Release 1.5, financial institutions can take advantage of "push" capabilities to deliver personalized news, reminders, bookmarks, and targeted cross-selling messages as part of their Internet banking applications.

Two customers, NCR Corp. and a top 100 bank, have just completed testing with the upgraded software, said Santa Clara, Calif.-based Edify.

Since the first version of Electronic Banking System, or EBS, was shipped to Atlanta Internet Bank through their joint partner AT&T Corp. in October 1996, 20 financial institutions have licensed the product, including seven of the 100 largest banks.

Five financial institutions have fully installed EBS 1.0, including Signet Bank in Richmond, Va., and Harris Bankcorp Inc. in Chicago. Several more are scheduled to be in production by the end of the summer. Upgrades to 1.5 are available for EBS customers free of charge.

Key features of the new version are: headline pages, classes of service, proactive notification, an interaction editor, personal bookmarks, and enhanced management tools.

William A. Soward, director of marketing, financial applications at Edify, said, "We're focused on trying to create a marketing engine for banks doing one-to-one banking on the Web. We've made significant progress and upgraded our capabilities."

He said that when customers come on-line, many use a browser bookmark to find the home page for their bank, and therefore they jump right into this screen. That makes all the advertising banks are doing on other Web pages extraneous.

"The real business case for them is to up-sell and cross-sell existing customers," Mr. Soward said. "When the customer gets the log-on page and is asked to put in his account number and PIN, this is the page that can be dynamically created and highly personalized."

This could include tailoring messages to a customer, such as "you have been prequalified for a $5,000 line of credit," "your auto loan has been approved," or "your telephone bill is due in five days."

Customers can be automatically contacted by the system, without human intervention, via E-mail, the Web, pager, fax, or pre-recorded telephone message accessed by a PIN.

"We're being not only reactive, but proactive," said Mr. Soward. "As push technology matures, this is an opportunity for a financial services company to have channels on the desktop and provide compelling content."

Edify's software has a Bill Pay Option that works with Checkfree and Visa Interactive. The company is also in a pilot with a top 100 bank that is to roll out the product in September. Edify is planning to build a similar module to support Integrion's Gold and the Open Financial Exchange home banking standards.

Mr. Soward said the system enables Web banking to be "created on the fly, conditioned by a set of rules driven by the bank, the customer browser, and information on the data base."

Edify's principal market targets are top-tier banks that will pay more than $195,000 for the software and custom-tailoring services, depending on the application. Mr. Soward said that is "very competitive."

Edify's primary competitor is Atlanta-based Security First Technologies' S1 product line. Most banks will find themselves choosing between the two if they decide not to build their own application, Mr. Soward said.

Edify offers a system that banks operate themselves, whereas much of Security First's business is in outsourcing. Edify works with computer servicing partners such as AT&T, NCR, Electronic Data Systems Corp., and NYCE Corp. Through a reseller program, its vendor partners include Sonata Systems of Charlotte, N.C., which works with community banks.

"We're emerging as a leader in the Web banking arena," said Mr. Soward. "Although there is a lot of hype about the Internet, it really comes down to execution. We're getting visibility and significant customers behind our product. We have real banks in production doing real things."

NCR is offering the upgraded EBS software to 500 outsourcing customers. The first bank in production with it is $190 million-asset Nantucket Bank in Massachusetts, and Presidential Savings Bank of Bethesda, Md., will go live this month.

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