World Briefs

Bank Of Mongolia/ING

The Trade Development Bank of Mongolia (TDBM), headquartered in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, will receive management services and technical assistance from ING Financial's (Amsterdam, The Netherlands) Institutional and Government Advisory (IGA) Group. The agreement follows an interim arrangement signed between IGA and TDBM to identify operational solutions for the bank following the bank's privatization by the Mongolian government in 2002.

Swiss Use Teconomic

Middleware outfit SeeBeyond (Monrovia, Calif.) is partnering with systems consultant Teconomic (Zurich) to deliver SWIFT-based services to the Swiss financial community. The partnership revolves around the sale of SeeBeyond's Integrated Composite Application Network Suite 5.0, with Teconomic's package of services and products for SWIFT network banks.

Banorte Taps Elix

Banco Mercantil del Norte (Banorte) of Mexico, (Monterrey, Mexico) has chosen Montreal-based Elix's interactive-voice response (IVR) platform for telephone banking services to handle more than 20 million calls per year. The open architecture of Elixs IVR will enable Banorte to handle the ever-increasing number of inbound calls as the company's customer base continues to grow. In addition, the platform has enabled Banorte to reach its quality standards concerning abandoned calls and port saturation.

Derbyshire Picks Diebold

North Canton, Ohio-based Diebold has secured a deal with Derbyshire Building Society (Duffield Village, England) to supply 24 advanced-function, through-the-wall Opteva 760 units and an Opteva 520 lobby machine. The units will operate on Diebold's Agilis software platform, an open system that allows multiple vendors' terminals and their respective technologies to co-exist.

BUPA Selects Stellent

BUPA Australia, headquartered in (Victoria, Australia, has selected Stellent Inc., (Eden Prairie, Minn.) to power 17 business Web sites. BUPA Australia covers one million Australians under the HBA and Mutual Community customer brands and is part of BUPA, an independent health and care organization with more than eight million members in 190 countries. Stellent Content Management will power BUPA Australia's local-market public sites for each state in Australia that will share appropriate content-based on BUPA Australia's offerings in each state-while maintaining appropriate local information and branding among other sites.

First National Bank/Hypercom

The First National Bank of South Africa, a division of FirstRand Bank Ltd. (Sandton, South Africa), has selected networking technology and up to 5,000 EMV-certified ICE(TM) card payment terminals for a secure, end-to-end EMV transaction system from Hypercom Corporation (Phoenix, Ariz.). Hypercom, and partner Grintek Telecom (Gauteng, South Africa), have been selected to provide First National Bank the EMV technology migration solution.

London Bridge Signs Deal

Global Bank of Commerce, headquartered in St. John's, Antigua, has partnered with London Bridge Group (London) to establish an application service center that will provide outsourced services to Eastern Caribbean financial institutions.