Headlines:
Unisys Image System at Bank of China Unit Bill-Payment Draws on Bank Accounts Open Solutions Signs Thrift, Credit Union ING Direct Using ACI Anti-Launder Product Corillian Appoints Successor to McCoy
Unisys Image System at Bank of China Unit
Bank of China Hong Kong Ltd. will use a digital imaging system from Unisys Corp. to store teller transaction documents such as deposit and credit slips now stored on microfilm.
Unisys, of Blue Bell, Pa., got the job at the end of the second quarter and expects the system to be operating by March, said Iain Moss, the head of its Asia-Pacific banking practice.
The state-owned commercial bank, a unit of Bank of China, produces 400,000 documents a day at its nearly 300 branches, he said. They are now stored at a scanning center in Shenzhen.
About 1,000 requests a day for research on transactions are e-mailed to the center, where employees search through the records manually and send back printouts, Mr. Moss said. The new system will permit faster searches with a Web browser, he said.
The new project builds on one Unisys began in 2003, Mr. Moss said. His company then moved data entry for processing documents such as credit card applications and mortgage loan requests to the Shenzhen site.
"That freed up a lot of their bank branch staff to do the more interesting piece of banking, which is selling and developing the customer relationships," Mr. Moss said. "The voucher processing opportunity was the next logical phase."
A Unisys spokeswoman said the current project will not be affected by the agreement announced last week under which an investor group led by Royal Bank of Scotland is to buy 10% of Bank of China. Mr. Moss said Bank of China Hong Kong, established in October 2001, operates independently.
Bill-Payment Draws on Bank Accounts
Billers can now tap consumers' bank accounts as well as credit cards through First National of Nebraska Inc.'s corporate bill-payment service.
They can also now use an online interface to manage the payments.
The company has been offering preauthorized withdrawals from card accounts for four years. The expanded service, called First Billing Online, has been available to selected users for a year; First Nebraska started offering it to others this month.
A large telecommunications customer asked for the enhancement, and about a dozen large billers are using it now, said Diana Mehochko, the president of First National Merchant Solutions, a unit of First Nebraska's First National Bank of Omaha. "We expect that number to grow," she said.
Billers typically prefer automated clearing house withdrawals because they receive the money faster and pay less to get it. But the first billers to use the ACH service confirmed that - probably because of rewards programs - consumers prefer to use cards, she said.
Only 10% to 20% of their consumer customers set up preauthorized bill payment to draw on a bank account instead of a card account, she said.
In marketing the service, First Nebraska plans to target four major industries - insurance, utilities, property management, and telecommunications and cable - that account for two-thirds of the bill-payment industry, Ms. Mehochko said.
"We have penetration into all of those markets," she said. "We have the desire to grow in these areas."
Open Solutions Signs Thrift, Credit Union
Two new Open Solutions Inc. customers - Home Federal Savings and Loan Association of Nampa, Idaho, and Dyess Federal Credit Union of Abilene, Tex. - said they expect its core systems software to help them grow.
The Glastonbury, Conn., vendor said last week that Home Federal will use its Complete Banking Solution software and Dyess Federal its Complete Credit Union Solution platform.
Home Federal, which has $654 million of assets and 15 branches, including five in Wal-Mart Stores Inc. stores, expects to be using the new software by early November.
The thrift has been growing 15% a year for eight years, said Dan Stevens, its president and chief executive, in the software firm's press release.
"We wanted to get away from the mainframe, legacy type of solution so we would have an open architecture to operate more independently," he said. "We didn't want a system we would be outgrowing or that we would have to constantly update in order to keep pace with our growth."
Dyess Federal originally served Dyess Air Force Base but now has a community charter that enables it to serve 10 counties. It has $84 million of assets and 14,000 members.
Gary Daniel, a senior vice president and the general manager of Open Solutions' credit union group, said in a press release that the new software would give Dyess Federal "a basis for growth and expansion of their system capabilities well into the future."
The credit union is also to use Open Solutions software for consumer loan origination, general ledger and accounts payable, automated teller machine and debit transactions, and speech recognition.
ING Direct Using ACI Anti-Launder Product
ING Group NV is using anti-money-laundering software from ACI Worldwide, a division of Transaction Systems Architects Inc. of Omaha, for its ING Direct online banking business.
ACI Proactive Risk Manager monitors customer transactions to spot and prevent money laundering and fraud.
The Dutch banking company has installed the software in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, France, Italy, and Spain, ACI said Thursday.
"By taking an enterprisewide approach, organizations are able to see more in a shorter amount of time, minimize losses and help preserve their customer relationships," said Richard Launder, an ACI managing director, in a press release.
ING Direct has more than 11.5 million customers around the world and a deposit base of more than $151 billion.
Corillian Appoints Successor to McCoy
The online banking software vendor Corillian Corp. of Portland, Ore., which had been without a chairman since January 2004, got one last week.
He is Jay N. Whipple, a director since November 1997.
Mr. Whipple has also served as an executive vice president and vice chairman at the Atlanta bill-payment giant CheckFree Corp.; the chairman of Osprey Partners LLP, a software services company; and the president of the money management firm J.N. Whipple Inc.
"During my time with Corillian, I have seen the company grow from an emerging start-up to the premier provider of online banking services," he said in a press release last Wednesday. "Corillian has come a long way, but there are still many opportunities for growth and expansion within new products and key target markets."
His predecessor, John B. McCoy, left for personal reasons, a Corillian spokesman said. Mr. McCoy was a former chairman and chief executive officer of Bank One Corp.
