Headlines:
Wachovia Replacing Its Voice Systems Bill Payment Boost For Digital Insight Union Bank Using Private ACH Network
Wachovia Replacing Its Voice Systems
Wachovia Corp. plans to replace its collection of interactive voice response systems with an outsourced service, which it hopes will help it better control its costs.
The Charlotte company will use the Convergys SpeechPort system from Convergys Corp. of Cincinnati, said Steven G. Boehm, the general manager in charge of Wachovia's contact centers. A phased deployment is scheduled to be complete by the fourth quarter of 2005.
Today, Wachovia operates a dozen call centers, Mr. Boehm said in an interview last week. The centers employ 5,000 workers and handle 190 million to 195 million calls a year, including some 150 million calls that are handled by automated touch-tone or speech recognition IVR systems, he said.
The systems must be upgraded periodically, because a single IVR unit can handle only a certain volume of calls. By outsourcing the hardware and software, Wachovia expects to save money, he said.
Convergys "rewards us for delivering greater volume" by reducing per-call pricing as volumes increase, he said.
Bill Payment Boost For Digital Insight
Online bill payment is driving up revenue for Digital Insight Corp.
The Calabasas, Calif., online banking software and service vendor reported last week that its third-quarter net income rose 4% from the same quarter last year, to $4.8 million. Revenue rose 20%, to $47.5 million.
Revenue from Internet banking, including online bill payment services, grew 15%, to $38 million. Digital Insight said that even though the average revenue for each consumer account declined, online bill payment volume increased for the banks it serves.
"Online bill payment was a major catalyst behind our results," said Jeff Stiefler, Digital Insight's president and chief executive, in a press release. During the quarter, Digital Insight's bank clients signed up 106,000 of their customers for bill payment.
While the number of Internet banking customers at its clients' Web sites increased 21%, to 5.1 million, the number of online bill payment users increased 52%, to 922,000. As of Sept. 30, Digital Insight supported 1,366 online banking sites, a 4% increase from a year earlier.
"We expect our recent strength in bill payment to continue, as our clients increasingly recognize that driving higher levels of bill pay adoption is rapidly becoming a long-term survival issue," Mr. Stiefler said.
Union Bank Using Private ACH Network
Union Bank of California has begun processing automated clearing house transactions over Clearing House Payments Co.'s network, and a bank executive says the network will probably get the majority of his company's business.
Until now Union Bank has used the Federal Reserve's ACH network, but as an owner of the Clearing House through the Small Value Payments Co. division, it was natural for the bank to use more of the company's services, said Kathleen Milner, a senior vice president at Union Bank. Besides, she said, "As prudent bankers, we need to have contingency plans. It's always good to have a competitive environment."
Clearing House Payments, of New York, operates Electronic Payments Network, the only private ACH alternative to the Fed's system.
The San Francisco bank, a unit of UnionBanCal Corp., which is majority-owned by Mitsubishi Tokyo Financial Group Inc., began using the EPN system this month, Ms. Milner said in an interview last week.
She said Union Bank will receive about half of its incoming ACH payments over the Fed's network - including the direct deposit of government paychecks and benefits - but will probably send as much as 60% of its ACH originations out over the private network. (The rest will continue to go through the Fed's system.)
