Headlines:
BB&T to Install Carreker's IRD Author Searchspace Lands South African Bank Wachovia Names Next E-Commerce Chief Fiserv Product Delivers for Kansas Bank
BB&T to Install Carreker's IRD Author
BB&T Corp. has agreed to use image replacement document production software from Carreker Corp.
The Winston-Salem, N.C., banking company plans to implement Carreker's IRD Author, which generates and processes paper printouts of check images.
Some banks are settling check payments electronically by sending each other image files instead of the original paper checks. But because most banks are not ready to receive images, image-ready companies are converting the files into IRDs for presentment.
With Carreker's software banks can print the IRDs on-site or forward the files to a remote printing facility closer to paying banks.
The Dallas company said the Federal Reserve banks are using its software to produce about 1.8 million IRDs a day.
J.D. (Denny) Carreker, Carreker's chairman and chief executive, said Monday in a press release, "As the industry continues its transition to electronification, IRDs are playing an important role in bridging the gap between banks, such as BB&T, with imaging capabilities and those without."
Searchspace Lands South African Bank
Nedbank Ltd. of Johannesburg is using anti-laundering software from Searchspace Ltd.
Searchspace, of London, said Wednesday that Nedbank is the first banking company in South Africa to implement its Anti Money Laundering Sentinel, which is already being used by more than half of the world's top 25 banking companies.
The software monitors every transaction for both personal and corporate accounts to spot and report unusual activity. It can look for known money-laundering behavior patterns and detect new ones.
Nedbank, one of South Africa's largest banking companies, installed the software with help from IBM South Africa.
In December, Searchspace's anti-laundering software got an endorsement from the American Bankers Association. The software monitors about 500 million accounts daily for such customers as Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC, Washington Mutual Inc., AmSouth Bancorp., Fifth Third Bancorp, and Marshall & Ilsley Corp.
Wachovia Names Next E-Commerce Chief
Wachovia Corp. promoted Gloria Chance to chief e-commerce director to succeed Lawrence Baxter, who is retiring at the end of this month.
The Charlotte banking company announced the appointment Tuesday. Ms. Chance, who has more than 20 years' experience in information technology, will oversee Wachovia's Internet and intranet sites and other online services.
Ms. Chance has been with the company since 2000 and was previously its director for online customer service excellence. Her duties will be slightly different from those of Mr. Baxter, who has headed Wachovia's Internet strategy since the early days of the Web. In December Mr. Baxter told American Banker that Wachovia wanted individual business units to have more say in Internet use and that they would be able to decide how, or whether, they want to implement technology programs developed by his successor.
Fiserv Product Delivers for Kansas Bank
Emprise Bank of Wichita says it has generated new business, cut operational costs, and increased productivity by using automated lockbox software from Fiserv Inc.'s Information Technology Inc.
ITI, of Lincoln, Neb., said Tuesday that the $806 million-asset Emprise has installed its Paydata.net software, which uses a single platform to processes both retail and wholesale lockbox payments. It also creates images of payments and enables customers to access payment data through the Internet.
Carolyn Moore, a vice president at Emprise and its information system services manager, said in ITI's press release that having an automated lockbox "has enables us to reduce staff oversight of individual lockboxes and take advantage of the time savings in high-volume processing."
The software has also helped Emprise compete against larger banks, she said. "Not only are we gaining new customers, we're also looking forward to converting our existing customer base to this service."
