|
Credit Union tech-talk News
March 2, 2009 - March 6, 2009
General News
* Fiserv Launches New Brand Identity
* Harland Financial Solutions Sets New Record for Internet Banking Sales
* CU*Answers Releases 2009 Peer Analysis
* Star One Renews Contract with uMonitor
* Charter Oak FCU Selects Touché Analyzer
Fiserv, a leading global provider of financial services technology solutions, unveiled an enhanced market approach and new brand identity. The company’s 77 business units and 12 group presidents will be basically divided into two groups that serve more than 16,000 customers with about 20,000 employees, including about 2,400 in the credit union division.
Harland Financial Solutions announced that its Electronic Banking Business signed 119 new Cavion Internet Banking clients in 2008 – a figure that surpasses its record set the prior year. The company’s Electronic Banking Business offers credit unions a variety of electronic banking services, including Internet banking, as well as business banking, voice banking, mobile banking, website development and hosting, Internet connectivity, and security solutions.
West Michigan-based CUSO CU*Answers announced the most recent release of its Peer Analysis, designed to show how credit union peers utilize CU*Answers’ Tools and Services. The analysis itself is a worksheet showing all CU*Answers credit union clients, and the features utilized by each. The guide also provides a description of many key features offered by the CU*BASE platform.
uMonitor, a financial solution services provider for member acquisition and deposit growth, announced that Star One Credit Union has chosen to renew and expand its uOpen & uFund with switch kit services. In addition the credit union will deploy uTransfer – the account-to-account funds transfer solution to strengthen its online offerings for the members, allowing members to move money from anywhere, at any time.
Harland Financial Solutions announced that Charter Oak Federal Credit Union recently implemented its Touché Analyzer MCIF and Advisory Services consulting solutions. The $600M asset-sized credit union headquartered in Groton, CT, selected Touché Analyzer in part to help achieve its membership and share of wallet objectives.
Hardware News
Panini has introduced the Panini I:Deal which is a new check scanning platform designed specifically for small business remote deposit capture (RDC). Capabilities of the Panini I:Deal include dual-sided image capture, document franking, and advanced reading technologies in the areas of MICR and OCR. Meanwhile, Digital Check, a provider of desktop check scanners for RDC, announced the addition of franking capabilities to its new CheXpress CX30 check scanner. The firm says that the CX30 reduces the risk of duplicate deposit with the addition of the franking feature, which adds a franking mark to checks that have been run through the scanner indicating that the item has been processed.
Network Attached Storage (NAS) vendors continue to add functionality while lowering their prices. One leading vendor has come out with a low cost NAS that is VMware-ready and designed to give small organizations the same virtualization flexibility as their enterprise-level counterparts. We will cover it in the April issue of Credit Union tech-talk - subscribe today.
Back to Top
Software Updates
Microsoft has been adding a one-click “fix it” utility to some of its Knowledge Base (KB) articles to help users solve Windows problems without having to navigate through a maze of instructions. This idea is to automate the steps in Microsoft KB articles and Windows Error Reporting (WER) solutions so a Windows user can simply click a button and have the issue resolved. The goal of Fix It is to try to provide a way to apply automated fixes, workarounds, or configuration changes so you don’t have to perform a long list of manual steps yourself.
AppRiver's Shoreline program is a Microsoft Exchange hosting system that comes with unlimited mailbox space. Built using Microsoft .Net, Shoreline features a web-based control panel that enables administrators to directly access their hosted Exchange environment without the need for internal Exchange-trained staff. The Shoreline management interface includes email routing, aliases, groups, users, mailbox storage, forwarding, passwords and client configuration. The company offers a 30-day trial period to test out the Shoreline hosting service. .
|
Software Section Sponsored by
Raddon Financial Group (RFG)
|
Back to Top
ATMs/Kiosks
Tremont Capital Group estimates that 401,500 ATMs are currently deployed within the United States, approximately 202,500 (50%) of which are now operated by independent sales organizations. The ATM industry consultancy predicts that average ATM transaction volumes will stabilize and possibly increase a bit as consumer credit standards continue to tighten. They also believe that financial institutions will slightly consolidate their ATM networks, while continuing to implement check-imaging upgrades on an accelerated basis.
Technology Credit Union announced in partnership with LocatorSearch, a leading provider of locator applications for credit unions, a new GPS download that will allow Tech CU members to find surcharge-free ATMs using their GPS device. Tech CU members can use the new download to conveniently find the nearest surcharge-free ATM to their location by simply following turn-by-turn directions with their Garmin, TomTom or other GPS device.
Back to Top
Biometric Digest Highlights - WWW.BIODIGEST.COM
Vietnamese researchers have been able to successfully trick facial recognition systems on laptops from vendors such as Lenovo, Asus and Toshiba. Some observers blame the low resolution (800x600) that standard webcams on laptops typically use. The researchers were able to enroll a user and then fool the system to permit them to login using a picture of the enrolled user printed on a piece of letter-size paper.
Back to Top
Wireless World
Fiserv announced the results of recent market research that quantified the interest among financial institutions for mobile deposit capture. Mobile deposit capture is an extension of remote deposit capture (RDC) that enables checks to be deposited anywhere via a mobile phone equipped with a camera to create and send an image of the check. Fiserv's research revealed that: 1) one-third of respondents see a need to offer mobile deposit capture services to businesses; 2) 70% of respondents agree that businesses would benefit from having check deposits scanned in the field; and 3) nearly all respondents indicated businesses that sell products and services at the buyer's location would be willing to pay for mobile deposit capture services. In a related story, Mitek Systems and mFoundry recently demonstrated Mitek’s ImageNet Mobile Deposit capabilities integrated within the mFoundry mobile banking application on an iPhone.
CTIA-The Wireless Association has unveiled "Best Practices and Guidelines for Mobile Financial Services (MFS)," which were unanimously approved by America's leading wireless carrier companies. The non-profit group said that the purpose of the Best Practices and Guidelines for MFS is to establish an environment where MFS transactions are authorized, secure, and compliant with applicable laws and industry guidelines, and to protect user privacy and financial data. Areas covered by the guidelines include data security, consent, disclosure and account information access, which are critical areas to assure wireless users of safety, security, and privacy.
Little Rock-based Arkansas Employees Federal Credit Union has purchased Cavion Mobile Banking Professional to supplement its current home banking suite. Harland Financial Solutions also announced that it has signed 42 new Cavion Mobile Banking Professional deals since the solution was launched several months ago. The Web-based mobile banking application enables members to conduct their banking transactions from a range of mobile devices, including account transfers and bill payment, as well as view balances and cleared check images real-time from a secure interface.
Back to Top
Security Section
Check Point' Software Technologies announced its new Software Blade architecture. The company says that this architecture allows their clients to select from a library of over 20 software blades and choose the exact security protections necessary for their environment and sites. These software blades include a firewall, virtual private network (VPN), intrusion prevention system (IPS), anti-virus, policy management or provisioning blades - all of which can be centrally managed.
Atlanta-based Georgia’s Own Credit Union has implemented Code Green Networks’ CI-1500 Content Inspection Appliance. Code Green’s Content Inspection appliances inspect and protect secure content on the network, and include built-in e-mail encryption.
What is the top-rated security suite this year? We will cover some winners based on reviews from PC World, PCMag, Maximum PC, and others in the April issue of Credit Union tech-talk - subscribe now.
Back to Top
Leaders Roundtable
Security:
Protecting Member Data at Rest and in Motion
Back to Top
Technology and Marketing
Surado Solutions announced the release of Surado CRM Online - Professional Edition which is an on-demand/hosted Customer Relationship Management product. The offering comes with the core Surado CRM suite including Contact & Account Management, Sales & Opportunity Management, Marketing and Customer Service. Plus the product has the ability to start in On Demand CRM mode and later move to an on-premise system.
Dallas-based TNB Card Services has launched a new credit and debit card personalization service. Member cardholders can personalize their cards using digital photographs or graphic elements of their choosing, or they are free to use an array of pre-designed card images.
Back to Top
Online Banking/E-Commerce/Website Design
NCR introduced software called NCR Aptra Consumer Passport that enables credit unions to offer member RDC through their online banking sites. Credit unions can host the software themselves or get it through NCR on a software-as-a-service basis. The program enables members using TWAIN-based flatbed scanners to create images of checks they receive and upload them to the credit union for deposit.
Same-day, or expedited, payments are gaining popularity according to Metavante. Nearly two years after introducing a same-day bill-payment service, Metavante is reporting that its client financial institutions are seeing a 10% adoption rate among active online bill payers. The Milwaukee-based firm notes that adoption rates vary widely depending on pricing. The firm is advising institutions to charge between $4 and $5 for expedited electronic payments.
Discover Financial Services announced the launch of the Current by Discover Card, a debit card for teens. Discover says the Current Card model eliminates the risk of overdraft fees and helps protect teens from going into debt since they can't spend more than the amount on the card. Parents can deposit funds directly onto their teen's card, and track spending activity online at the Current Account Center and through e-mail and text message alerts.
Back to Top
Internet Access
BT has introduced a comprehensive new family of consulting services for American organizations looking to make the move to unified communications and colloboration (UCC). BT's UCC Strategic Planning and Assessment umbrella provides four services. The first one is the UCC Strategic Planning where BT’s business consultants develop a UCC strategy and roadmap. In the second service, BT focuses on defining the business benefits of an organization’s UCC strategy. The third service involves BT developing a return on investment calculation for specific UCC decisions. The last service is UCC Infrastructure Gap Analysis where BT studies an organization’s existing technology environment.
LightEdge Solutions say that their Hosted Unified Communications product – part of their Connected Office suite – provides a single platform for voice, e-mail, instant messaging and calendaring, allowing a user to work anywhere and collaborate in real time. Based on hosted messaging and collaboration software from Microsoft, as well as VoIP application software provider BroadSoft’s platform, the solution is designed to help smaller organization obtain unified communications as a hosted service more easily and inexpensively.
If your credit union is looking to roll out Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), Quality of Service (QoS) is going to be critical. Unfortunately, there is a lot more to implementing QoS than just switching on a router feature - we will discuss some steps to better QoS for VoIP in the April issue of Credit Union tech-talk - subscribe today.
Back to Top
Call Centers
Contactual has updated their OnDemand Contact Center cloud/software-as-a-service multichannel contact center platform to Version 6. The firm says that the updated solution offers better security, a new reporting API and an improved IVR editor. It also has a redesigned agent toolbar, ability to broadcast notices to agent groups, enhanced chat functions and desktop sharing to make agents more productive. Plus it supports on-demand call reporting, monitoring, service level management, and historical reports.
Back to Top
Conferences
Catch Tom and Bill Rogers, Associate Editor of Credit Union tech-talk at the following conferences in 2008:
April 6-8, Park City - 2009 MVi Users Conference
June 4-5, Lake Las Vegas - Credit Union InfoSecurity Conference
Back to Top
|
