Headlines:
JPM Chase to Service Freddie Portfolio Fiserv Buys Marketing Materials Printer Credit Agricole to Install Norkom Product
JPM Chase to Service Freddie Portfolio
JPMorgan Chase & Co. expects to begin servicing Freddie Mac's $700 billion portfolio of mortgage-backed securities and other assets this weekend.
The New York banking company called the custody outsourcing deal the largest such one in the industry.
JPMorgan Chase said Tuesday that its JPMorgan Worldwide Securities Services had won the contract to provide transaction processing and record keeping to the McLean, Va., government-sponsored enterprise.
Christopher E. Lynch, a senior vice president at the unit and its head of North American sales, said JPMorgan Chase's technology would allow Freddie executives to monitor the flow of funds in real time.
"When you have a $700 billion portfolio, you need to know what is happening throughout the day," Mr. Lynch said.
The portfolio consists primarily of Freddie-issued mortgage-backed securities and $70 billion of short-term assets from a variety of issuers for mortgage investment and debt-funding activities.
Mr. Lynch said the JPMorgan Chase system, which replaces one that Freddie developed in-house over the years, also would help the mortgage financier comply with the Federal Reserve Board's revised payments system risk policy, which takes effect today.
The revised policy, approved in 2004, requires GSEs to fully fund their Fedwire payment obligations before a daily 4 p.m. Eastern cutoff. Companies previously could use "daylight overdrafts" from the Fed, making payments early in the morning even if the funds to cover them were not received into their Fed accounts until later in the day.
Freddie Mac announced last week that it had begun doing business using a strategy that aims to fully fund its daily payment obligations by 11 a.m.
Fiserv Buys Marketing Materials Printer
Fiserv Inc. has acquired Jerome Group LLC, a St. Louis printer of specialized marketing materials.
The Brookfield, Wis., banking technology vendor announced the deal Monday and said Jerome will become part of its business-to-consumer communications company, Personix.
Jorge Diaz, the president of Fiserv's output solution division, would not give a price for the deal, which closed last week. Last year Jerome generated $44 million of revenue.
Mr. Diaz said Jerome, which produces direct mail solicitations, "focuses on a segment of print mail that we had not addressed." It uses customer and transaction data "to communicate with a market of one, with specific demographic characteristics or psychographic characteristics."
Jerome has more than 300 employees, including a 30-person advertising agency that develops creative materials. No layoffs are expected, and the company will remain in St. Louis under the supervision of Ken Brown, a 26-year company veteran, who was promoted to executive vice president in February and will retain that title as a Fiserv executive.
Fiserv said it plans to offer its services Jerome's services and to cross-sell other Fiserv services to Jerome's clients, which include large and midsize companies across the country.
Jerome's Web site lists customers in a variety of industries, including advertising agencies, airlines, health care and home improvement companies, manufacturers, and retailers.
Credit Agricole to Install Norkom Product
The French banking company Credit Agricole SA has agreed to use anti-laundering software from Norkom Technologies Inc. of Boston throughout its retail banking operations.
The software monitors transactions to spot unusual patterns, and it compares customers' names to watch lists of known criminals and terrorists, and high-risk organizations and countries, the vendor said.
It can prioritize warnings so investigators can focus first on those that pose the greatest risk, Norkom said.
Credit Agricole, which has 23 million retail banking customers, will install the software in phases over the next 18 months.
Norkom, which announced the deal Tuesday, has clients in more than 100 countries. It said this month that Iceland's central bank and three banking companies in that country would use its anti-laundering software.
