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Bank Systems & Technology: The Blog

« August 2007 | Main | October 2007 »

My last blog "When David And Goliath Come To Terms, One Wonders What The Sub-Goliaths Were Doing" was about the absence of accuracy in reporting the true cost of IT. Here, I'll give my views, based on my work experience at 331 banks, as to why accuracy is more than just a good thing to do in compiling a P&L. An accurate IT cost is a major factor in taking initiatives to arrive at sound IT decisions.

Mergers and acquisitions are a fact of life in the financial services industry. If experts are correct, they will only pick up in pace in the coming months. One of the most recent mergers of note in the banking world involves that of The Bank of New York and Mellon Financial to form The Bank of New York Mellon. Mergers are never easy. And when it involves two financial institutions with over 100 years of experience each, integration becomes even more of a potential nightmare.

Should banks and others bother to continue playing catch up with cyber criminals and their constantly evolving techniques? This was the question FBI special agent Timothy O'Brien set out to answer during his session titled Is Online Security a Lost Cause? O'Brien is with the Bureau's computer crimes squad and tracks criminals' activities on the Web.

"Sixteen years ago, if you asked me if I was going to be dealing with the kinds of things I'm dealing with today, I would have said no," said Dick Harp, SVP and director corporate security for Huntington National Bank.

As a consultant, I have worked for 4% of all small banks, 5% of all medium size banks and 14% of the 111 large banks in the U.S. My consulting practice includes 16 services. The second most popular one is an analysis of a bank's IT expense.

By Nancy Feig

Today, Symantec revealed findings about the rewards phishers are reeling in for personal information phished from consumers.

Funny coincidence. I was sitting at my desk speaking with a co-worker who was upset that her rent check didn’t yet clear. She thought she had given herself enough time but sure enough, the check is just sitting somewhere and hasn’t appeared on her (online) bank statement. At that point, she said she just didn’t understand why she couldn’t pay her landlord electronically. I heartily agreed with her.

I noticed a recent editor's note from a colleague who works at one of BS&T's sister publications, InformationWeek, where he cites an article from yet another online publication, Slate. In my colleague's editorial, he poses a question to readers about whether they were impressed when they receive an email that says "Sent from my BlackBerry" at the bottom. He says that according to the Slate article that such a message shows the recipient "you're on the move but still chained to work." The InformationWeek editor, however, feels the messages are a complete waste of time, even bordering on free ads for BlackBerrys.

By Maria Bruno-Britz, Bank Systems & Technology

As if they didn’t have enough on their plate in Europe, it turns out that certain entities will not be ready to launch payments instruments related to the single euro payments area (SEPA) initiative—chiefly public administrations and corporates. This was the key finding of the third annual World Payments Report, issued by Capgemini, ABN AMRO, and the European Financial Management & Marketing Association (EFMA).

First, how about if I define the players:

David is ACI Worldwide at $348 million per year in revenue.

Goliath is IBM at $91 billion per year.

The sub-Goliaths are CheckFree at $973 million and Metavante at $1.5 billion.

While FEMA is no better prepared for a major hurricane today than it was when Katrina struck in September 2005, one bank has taken it upon itself to be prepared for future crises.

A recent study by Phoenix Payments Research confirms what the industry has begun to realize—-that debit cards engender more loyalty among bank customers versus credit cards.

By Maria Bruno-Britz, Bank Systems & Technology

Is it just me or are wallets shrinking? I mean literally, not figuratively.

I don’t know what the situation is with men’s wallets, but I went on a foray recently to purchase a new wallet for myself. I must have tried 10 different wallets and each was just as mis-sized as the other. They were all leather of varying degrees of quality. However, I found the problem plagued wallets across the price spectrum.

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