In Brief (three items)

Financial Information Firm Raises $40M

PALO ALTO, Calif. - Integral Development Corp., whose principal business is the CFOWeb.com Web site, has secured investments of more than $40 million.CFOWeb.com is geared to fund managers and corporate treasurers. It offers information on portfolio and risk management and access to financial products, including those not traded on exchanges.

Dutch bank ABN Amro, Accel Partners, insurance giant American International Group, Bain Capital, Nassau Capital, and Pivotal Asset Management invested in the current round of financing.

Executives from the financial and technology industries also made individual investments. They are: Jack Acosta, chief financial officer of Portal Software; Bill Coleman, chief executive officer of BEA Systems; Gary Davis, president of American International Group; John Dillon, CEO of Salesforce.com; Ken Goldman, CFO of Excite@Home; George Kadifa, CEO of Corio; Nico Nierenberg, CEO of Actuate; and Larry Tomlinson, treasurer of Hewlett-Packard.

Integral said that with the additional capital it will expand its global marketing, sales, and business development efforts.


International Data Sees PKI Taking Off

FRAMINGHAM, Mass. - International Data Corp. predicts that the long-held, lofty expectations for the public key infrastructure form of data encryption technology will be realized in the next few years.IDC expects revenues from public key infrastructure, or PKI, to rise from $122.7 million in 1998 to $1.3 billion by 2003. The growth will come more from the security demands of electronic commerce than from corporate management of security risks, IDC said.

"Developers of Internet applications are embracing PKI as a technology that allows for high degrees of authenticity, management, scale, and real-time [encryption] key exchange in the public domain," said Abner Germanow, a senior analyst in IDC's Internet security research program. That unit issued a report - titled "PKI: Nothing But Pilots?" - that includes analyses of leading encryption and digital certificate vendors such as RSA Security, Verisign, Entrust Technologies, Baltimore Technologies, GTE Cybertrust, and Xcert International.

"Business-to-business e-commerce activities require levels of authentication, nonrepudiation, and scale that only PKI products have the ability to provide,'' Mr. Germanow said. By 2001, he added, digital certificates will be commonplace on the consumer level.


Software Helps Screen Hourly Job Seekers

BEAVERTON, Ore. - Decision Point Systems Inc., which sells software to help employers find the best hourly workers, has begun marketing to the banking industry.Its HirePro package handles applications and pre-employment tests, captures tax credit information, and performs background checks, including Social Security number verification. Completed applications can be sent to hiring managers within 10 minutes, by e-mail or fax. The Profiler portion of the software can structure the face-to-face interview by telling the hiring manager the applicant's admissions, omissions, experience, and background-check results.

The average annual turnover among America's 91 million hourly workers is 50%, resulting in 45 million job openings each year, which attract an average of five applicants per position, according to Decision Point.

The firm's Hire Point Job Center packages the HirePro software in a kiosk at which prospective employees can apply to a company using the HirePro screen phone. There are about 12,000 HirePro screen phones in stores nationwide; clients include Target, Blockbuster, Limited Corp., Pizza Hut, and Toys R Us.

"The same dynamics occurring in retail apply to banking," said Robert DeKoning, president and chief executive officer of Decision Point. "The economy is creating new jobs, and there's more of a demand for hourly workers, particularly in call centers."

Decision Point processed 3.1 million applications last year. Access to the software through the Web will become available this summer.

For reprint and licensing requests for this article, click here.
MORE FROM AMERICAN BANKER