Headlines:
BankPlus Using Carreker Filter Metavante Buys Prime of N.J. Frost Installs Bill-Pay Software Pew Research Web Banking Poll
BankPlus Using Carreker Filter
BankPlus Corp. of Belzoni, Miss., has started using an anti-laundering software package from Carreker Corp.
Carreker announced the contract Thursday. Tony Kaus, the Dallas technology vendor's product manager, said in an interview that the $1.3 billion-asset BankPlus began using the software in December.
The software, Core (Carreker Online Risk management Expert) AML Filter, compares names from transaction and account data against industry or bank-specific lists to identify suspicious individuals and organizations.
"Complying with increasingly stringent anti-money-laundering regulatory requirements creates additional resource needs for the bank, but Core AML Filter allows us to meet those requirements without significant impact to our bottom line," Gee Gee Patridge, BankPlus' chief financial officer, said in Carreker's press release.
Mr. Kaus said BankPlus, which has 48 branches in 30 Mississippi communities, has purchased two other anti-fraud programs from Carreker and will start using them commercially next month.
Metavante Buys Prime of N.J.
Metavante Corp. has completed its acquisition of Prime Associates Inc., a Clark, N.J., vendor of anti-laundering compliance software.
The technology subsidiary of the Milwaukee banking company Marshall & Ilsley Corp. announced the acquisition Wednesday. The deal was announced in December.
Prime will retain its name and management and will operate as a subsidiary of Metavante, which plans to offer Prime's products online.
Frost Installs Bill-Pay Software
Frost Bank has taken its online bill payment system in-house.
The $9.9 billion-asset subsidiary of Cullen/Frost Bankers Inc. of San Antonio, had outsourced its bill payment operations to InteliData Technologies Corp. of Reston, Va., but is now using the vendor's software internally.
InteliData said last week that Frost is the first bank to run the software on a server computer rather than a mainframe.
Carl Bush, Frost's executive vice president of information technology, said in an InteliData press release, "We migrated all of our users to the new server-based environment on schedule and on budget." The shift produced a "minimal customer impact," he said.
Pew Research Web Banking Poll
A quarter of all U.S. adults, and 44% of those who use the Internet, are using online banking, according to a study the Pew Research Center released Wednesday.
Both figures rose 47% from October 2002, according to the study, which was conducted in November. The Washington nonprofit also found that the average number of people who bank online each day rose 58%, to 13 million.
The findings confirmed long-standing trends in the banking industry and demonstrate that people are more willing to use the Internet to conduct business as it becomes a part of everyday life.
People in "generation X" - those ages 28 to 39 - were more likely to use online banking than any other age group, the study found. Sixty percent of people in that age group with Internet access have used online banking, compared to 38% of people aged 18 to 27 and just 25% of people over 60.
The study also found strong links between high-speed Internet connections and online banking use; 63% of people with broadband lines at home indicated that they use online banking, compared with 32% of people with dial-up systems.
College graduates reported higher rates of online banking use than people with only a high school diploma, and 55% of households with annual income of $75,000 or more said they had used online banking, compared to 32% of those with $30,000 or less.
In the 2002 study, equal numbers of men and women said they had tried online banking, but the November survey found that 49% of men with Internet access were banking online compared to only 39% of women.
