Headlines:
S1 to Buy Zions Risk-Software Unit Fiserv to Offer More Digital Insight Software Harland Gets Texas Processing Job
S1 to Buy Zions Risk-Software Unit
To attract more U.S. customers, a Belgian unit of S1 Corp. is buying a Zions Bancorp. subsidiary that develops risk management software.
The Zions unit is Providus Software Solutions Inc. of Nashua, N.H. The buyer is FRS of Brussels, which S1, of Atlanta, bought in 1999 but which still sells its risk management and compliance software mostly in Europe and Asia.
The deal was announced Tuesday and may close this week. FRS is to pay $800,000 up front plus additional sums that would depend on future licensing deals.
Providus has expertise in operational risk management and compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and Basel II, said Edward Shea, its director of product strategy. Demand for such products is "really growing quite dramatically," he said.
FRS plans to move Providus' employees to an S1 facility in Massachusetts. Providus' RiskResolve software will be integrated into FRS' analytic applications.
The Belgian company has more than 600 financial services customers in 25 countries, including a "small and growing" number in the United States, said Charles Herel, its vice president for marketing and corporate development. The U.S. customers include PNC Financial Services Group Inc., HSBC North America, and Mitsubishi Tokyo Financial Group Inc.'s Union Bank of California, he said.
Zions, of Salt Lake City, formed Providus in 2003. It is selling because it decided to concentrate on being "a bank, not a software company," Mr. Herel said.
FRS' revenue grew 20% a year from 2002 to 2004, and "we're on pace to do that in 2005," Mr. Herel said. Though S1 does not break out its income, FRS is profitable, he said, and most of the profits are reinvested in it.
Fiserv to Offer More Digital Insight Software
Three units of Fiserv Inc.'s credit union division have agreed to offer their customers DeskTopLender Premium loan origination software from the online banking technology vendor Digital Insight Corp. of Calabasas, Calif.
The Fiserv units - XP Systems, Summit Information Systems, and Users Inc. - already support Digital Insight's consumer Internet banking software and lending products.
Fiserv, of Brookfield, Wis., has a tradition of "enabling our credit union clients to choose third-party specialty solutions," said Tom Neil, the president of its credit union and industry products group, in Digital Insight's press release. "Our relationship with Digital Insight is an example of that philosophy."
Harland Gets Texas Processing Job
The $118 million-asset First Community Bank, of San Benito, Tex., plans to outsource its core processing system to Harland Financial Solutions, the technology unit of John H. Harland Co. of Atlanta.
The bank will use Harland's Phoenix system, and the processing will be routed to Harland's Cincinnati data center. The contract was announced last week.
One attraction was the easy migration path from First Community's current third-party core processing system, the bank said in Harland's press release. "We believe that the functionality, flexibility, and efficiencies the system provides will allow us to differentiate ourselves," chief financial officer Robert B. Durkin 2d said in the release.
