North America Bytes

Wells Fargo joins the Electronic Payments Network; Commercebank licenses Harland's financial.center loan origination system; U.S. Bank enhances its S1 web banking system; Colonial Bank implements Alogent's item processing; BISYS provides One Group Administrative Services with college investment plan management system.

Wells Fargo & Company has decided to join the Electronic Payments Network (EPN), the nations third largest Automated Clearing House (ACH) originator. Wells Fargo has begun moving volume over to this private sector electronic payments system, expanding EPN's influence to the West Coast.

EPN technology eases the conversion to straight-through processing (STP) by building on the current ACH infrastructure, allowing banks to use the system they already have instead of investing in costly new ones that may not be as effective.

"Wells Fargo is moving ACH volume over to EPN for several reasons," said Mitch Christensen, executive vice president of Wells Fargo Services. "As an owner bank of EPN, we support a private sector alternative for electronic payments. In addition, EPN offers significantly more robust functionality that will allow Wells Fargo to provide enhanced services to our customers so we can satisfy all their financial needs and help them succeed financially."

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Florida-based Commercebank has instituted financial.center, a browser based solution for loan origination and account opening produced by Harland Financial Solutions.

The program, a hub that allows the bank to make and close loans, track sales activity, open deposit accounts and generate compliant documents using a standard browser, can be used by each computer at a branch instead of having to update individual computers due to the program's centralized processing ability. The browser format also allows for less time in training due to the familiarity of the browser application to most employees.

"Our technology investment strategy is key to maintaining our competitiveness," said Evan Sicle, project coordinator at Commercebank. "We require new solutions to be open, easily integrated and scalable--and browser-based applications such as financial.center embody this. We are delight that financial.center presented us with the capabilities and features we needed in a browser-based environment. Having that level of flexibility and ease of use, combined with the compliance strength Harland Financial Solutions is known for, makes financial.center a tremendous fit for us."

This new edition of financial.center includes improvements suggested by previous customers such as ARM and HELOC disclosures, combination promissory notes and the ability to interface with Harland's checks.center and host vendors.

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U.S. Bank has added S1 Corporation's Business Banking component to its pre-existing S1 Enterprise Platform in order to improve its online banking offerings as well as establish a single platform for the delivery of new treasury management services.

S1 Business Banking provides U.S. Bank the ability to provide services to all types of clients, including account activity information, domestic and international payment and transfer abilities, and check services.

"S1 has proven its ability to deliver eFinance solutions that empower institutions like ours to forge profitable relationships with business and corporate customers," said A.J. Lang, executive vice president of e-business at U.S. Bank. "This track record, coupled with the company's focus to create a single open platform for the delivery of integrated services, makes S1 the right partner to help us deliver web solutions for our business customers."

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Alabama-based Colonial Bank will install Sierra Clearing, a server-based accelerated item-processing product created by Alogent Corporation, a developer of item processing solutions for global financial institutions and remittance processors.

The bank's ultimate goal for Sierra Clearing is for the product to supplement and eventually replace their current check processing mainframe legacy system.

"In an industry marked by inflexibility, Alogent's Sierra Clearing offers something that has eluded bankers for three decades, mainframe caliber throughput and server-technology versatility and acceleration," said Luke Wood, vice president, Deposit Operations at Colonial Bank. "Alogent's innovation in running 3890s in a high volume image environment and supplementing our current system is unmatched in the industry; it is the cornerstone of our decision to purchase Sierra Clearing."

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Ohio-based One Group Administrative Services, Inc., a subsidiary of Bank One Corporation, will use CollegeChoice 529 Investment Plan, a portfolio accounting service for 529 college savings plans produced by The BISYS group.

The choice for One Group to use BISYS comes recently after the Indiana Education Savings Authority chose One Group to administer its 529-college savings plan. In turn BISYS was asked to perform the portfolio accounting functions, its strategic expansion into this new high-growth market.

According to Bill Tomko, president of BISYS Investment Services group, "Our agreement with One Group Administrative Services is a strategic milestone for BISYS since it marks our entrance into a dynamic new segment of the financial services industry, and demonstrates the strength and functionality of the accounting platform we offer to support the complex requirements of 529 college savings plans."