Fiserv has been on an innovation tear over the last year through the acquisition of CheckFree and organic product development - and the company hasn't been afraid to pony up to do so. Fiserv paid $4.4 billion for CheckFree in December of 2007, and CEO Jeff Yabuki says that beyond the $1 billion the company spends per year on innovation, there are anywhere from five to 10 big projects going on that have additional budgets from $25 million to $200 million.
Fiserv, based in Brookfield, WI with about $4 billion in revenues, counts 6,000 financial institutions as clients, and Yabuki says that virtually ensures that the innovations it adopts-if done correctly-will have a wide ripple effect. "The question for us is how do we take this inherent knowledge we gather by the nature of our privileged relationships with clients, how do you innovate and make it actionable for clients."
For example, at the time of the CheckFree acquisition, about 75 percent of the Fiserv core processing client base did not use a Fiserv electronic bill payment solution. That's changed. In the first half of 2008 alone 287 clients signed up for e-bill payment. Late last year, Fiserv also acquired WorkingRx, which strengthens Fiserv's position in the workers' compensation pharmacy transaction processing market; and BancIntelligence, which provides enhanced analytics to help financial institutions allocate resources and optimize profitability.
On the product development front, within the last year Fiserv hired its first CIO and created the Fiserv Enterprise Technology organization. The goal of the group is to provide a framework that allows each business within Fiserv to manage their portfolio of products and services through strategic IT investments.
When it comes to rolling out new, organically developed products, Fiserv has been busy over the last twelve months. In February, it launched Fiserv MyMoney to bring the power of social networking to the financial services industry; MyMoney is built on the Facebook platform and enables account holders to securely manage their finances from their Facebook profile. It is the only application that enables Facebook users to search for a new financial institution on Facebook, and then join the financial institution on the spot. Existing account holders can view account balances, review history, and transfer money directly through Facebook. By August, 35 financial institutions were using the MyMoney application.
To illustrate the power of such an application and the viral marketing advantages created by social networking, consider that Facebook is the fourth most trafficked site in the world, serving more than 90 million active users who spend an average of 25 minutes on the site each day. When a Facebook user adds a new application, such as MyMoney, to their profile, their friends are notified and given the chance to add the application.
Besides the MyMoney application, in February Fiserv added Fiserv Consumer Capture, a product FIs can offer consumers and small businesses to capture check deposits from the home or office, rather than traveling to a bank branch. Fiserv sees this as a way for FIs to strengthen retention, increase profitability and expand their footprints.
Lastly, within the last year, Fiserv launched Fiserv Automotive LOS eContracting, which provides comprehensive loan origination and workflow management, automated package validation and image-based contract processing.
