North America Bytes

Republic Bank of Chicago, a $500 million community bank based in Darien, Ill., has chosen Metavante Corporation to outsource its core processing. Metavante is the financial technology subsidiary of Marshall & Ilsley Corporation.

Metavante will provide Republic Bank with products and services that support financial account processing, electronic funds transfer and customer relationship management (CRM). Metavante is currently in the process of converting Republic Bank to its integrated banking system.

"Republic Bank has a long history of providing great customer service," said William H. Sperling, president & CEO, Republic Bank. "We were looking for a partner that will help us not only stay competitive in today's banking environment, but allow us to enhance our product line and to provide the customer service our customers have come to expect from Republic Bank. With Metavante, Republic Bank will be able to provide the customer service of a community bank and the array of products offered by much larger institutions."

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National City Bank Corporation has selected InterChange from Netik, a supplier of straight-through processing (STP) solutions for financial services, to provide enterprise-wide application integration and automation for SWIFT message processing.

Marc Pogachar, vice president of corporate business banking solutions at National City, selected Netik from a number of competing vendors "mostly for its scalability, flexibility and features. Following the research we conducted, we were impressed with both the technical capability of the product and the expertise of the people of Netik's personnel. The InterChange toolkit allows us to automate our environment with a minimum of coding, providing. This flexibility is attractive as we look to we need to improve and expand our international capabilities for our clients.

The Netik InterChange platform will provide an interface with National City's DDA system to enable transactions to be validated and enriched before being transformed into SWIFT MT940 and MT950 messages and sent to foreign counterparties. Netik InterChange will also enable inbound SWIFT MT950 and MT940 messages to be received, processed, and presented via web-based statements.

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American Savings Bank, a $6.2 billion federal savings bank based in Honolulu, Hawaii, will deploy an e-messaging suite from ZixCorp, a Dallas-based provider of secure e-messaging services, to enhance the security of its email communications to customers and external business partners.

Working with Network 2000, ZixCorp's new reseller in Hawaii, American signed a three-year deal with ZixCorp. The solution is based on ZixVPM, (ZixVirtual Private Messenger), ZixCorp's network secure e-messaging service. American will utilize ZixCorp's custom branding option, providing a customized interface for emails from the Bank.

"ZixVPM will allow American Savings Bank to send sensitive information to customers via email with complete confidence," said Craig Lee, chief information officer, American Savings Bank. "Customers can reply to the bank using the same encryption system, knowing that their communications are completely secure."