Headlines:
Wachovia Gets a Midsection Lockbox SEC Loosens Purse Strings to Tighten Up New Origination System at Fifth Third
Wachovia Gets a Midsection Lockbox
Seeking to build its payment-processing capability in the middle of the country, Wachovia Corp. has hired RemitStream Solutions to run a lockbox center for it in Chicago.
Shena Corbett-Worthy, a vice president at Wachovia and the wholesale receivables product manager in its treasury services division, said the center went into operation Feb. 1 and does wholesale and "wholetail" payment processing.
"The addition of the Chicago site is strengthening our reach," Ms. Corbett-Worthy said in an interview Feb. 18. "We were able to start off very quickly. We had a pipeline of customers ready for implementation."
Wachovia considered several alternatives, including building its own facility, before choosing RemitStream, a unit of Fiserv Inc. of Brookfield, Wis.
The Charlotte banking company provides lockbox services at a number of sites around the country. But with the exception of a center in Dallas, most of its operations are clustered on the nation's coasts. "Customers are demanding the central site," Ms. Corbett-Worthy said.
Wholesale lockbox handles business-to-business transactions that often involve multiple invoices, partial payments, disputed items, and other complex issues. "Wholetail" lockboxes handle a mix of wholesale and retail transactions. In February 2004, Wachovia outsourced its retail lockbox business - which typically relates one check to one invoice, and dollar amounts that match - to Remitco LLC, a First Data Corp. subsidiary.
Ms. Corbett-Worthy emphasized that Wachovia continues to offer the marketing and servicing on retail accounts. "We own the relationship. We own the point of contact. We own the customer service," she said. "We want to offer national remittance processing, be it retail, wholesale, or wholetail."
SEC Loosens Purse Strings to Tighten Up
With an expanded technology budget, the Securities and Exchange Commission is attempting to remake itself into a more aggressive regulator, according to TowerGroup.
A report released Tuesday by the MasterCard International market research unit said the SEC plans to spend $113 million on technology this fiscal year.
That is 150% more than it spent on technology in 2002 and 13% of the agency's 2005 budget. But the SEC's budget will probably be smaller next year; the White House's most recent budget proposal calls for cutting the agency's funding 2.7% in fiscal 2006.
The TowerGroup report said the SEC's tech operations have "languished under limited budgets and staffing, modest goals, and low morale" for several years. But it also said that William Donaldson, the agency's chairman since February 2003, now considers technology as a key to his plan to make the SEC a more effective industry watchdog.
The overall goal of Mr. Donaldson's efforts is better compliance from companies in the securities and trading industries, TowerGroup said.
The tech funds are earmarked for upgrading the SEC's infrastructure, developing new applications, improving data management, and expanding analytical capabilities.
New Origination System at Fifth Third
Fifth Third Bancorp says its service is better and costs lower after it replaced an outmoded mortgage origination system.
Stewart M. Greenlee, a senior vice president of the Cincinnati banking company and its director of mortgage lending, said in an interview Thursday that Fifth Third completed the commercial introduction of the new software around the first of the year.
That followed "a very deliberate" two-year rollout to train employees at more than 1,000 branches in the Midwest and the Southeast, Mr. Greenlee said.
Fifth Third selected the UniFi Pro Mortgage loan origination software system from Fiserv Inc. of Brookfield, Wis., and the Fiserv MortgageServ loan-servicing system. Fiserv announced the sale on Tuesday.
"It is allowing us to improve customer service," Mr. Greenlee said. He especially cited "point of sale decisioning," an automated system that can provide loan approvals to a lender while the applicant is still at the employee's desk. "That's pretty powerful."
Automated work-flow features also help reduce Fifth Third's cost of processing loan applications, he said. In today's hotly competitive mortgage market, "there is a huge need to take costs out of the system," Mr. Greenlee said.
He did not identify the loan-origination system that Fifth Third replaced except to say that it was no longer supported by the manufacturer.
