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~ This Week's News is Sponsored by Better Branches ~
* First Community CU in Houston Partners with Better Branches
* IMM Updates TotaleAtlas
* Mid-Minnesota FCU Selects Mobile Capture from Bluepoint Solutions
* CFE FCU Chooses Symitar`s Episys System
Better Branches Technology, a provider of branch visitor queuing, appointment handling and workforce management software for credit unions, announced that First Community Credit Union in Houston has adopted their Better Lobby/Appointment Calendar solution. This highly effective application will complement the other Better Branches solutions that the credit union currently uses: Better Lobby/New Accounts and Mobile Wait Indicator.
IMM, a provider of eSignature, workflow and document solutions for credit unions, has enhanced TotaleAtlas, its eSignature and document presentment platform, with a signature status dashboard and additional workflow features. The new dashboard gives credit unions visibility into the document and signature status of transactions throughout the TotaleAtlas session as well as the status of transactions sent to Document Exchange, IMM`s cloud-based remote eSignature solution.
Bluepoint Solutions announced that Baxter, MN-based Mid-Minnesota Federal Credit Union has chosen to implement its QwikDeposit ToGo mobile remote deposit capture (RDC) solution. Mid-Minnesota FCU, with $252 million in assets and over 37,000 members, said that the new solution will allow them to expand their self-service offerings and attract the next wave of new members - generations Y and Z.
Jack Henry & Associates, a leading provider of technology solutions and payment processing services for the financial services industry, announced that their Symitar division has signed the $1.4 billion CFE Federal Credit Union to use Episys as its in-house core processing solution. CFE, which was founded in 1937, is located in Central Florida and serves more than 130,000 members.
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The 12th annual CU InfoSecurity Conference will be held May 21 - 23, 2014 at the Red Rock Resort in Las Vegas, NV.
This is a one-of-a-kind conference - a security conference dedicated solely to credit unions. Highly experienced, expert speakers discuss the latest security trends as they specifically apply to credit unions. Also included is a virtual tour of The Partnership FCU and a Case Study of First Tech FCU. The CU InfoSecurity Conference is priced so that the majority of credit unions can afford it - just $395 per person and $295 for returning attendees. Topics include:
* Phishing 2.0 Exploits
* Anti-money Laundering
* DDoS Mitigation Strategies
* Advanced Log Management
* Effectively Using Data Feeds
* Owning Credit Union Networks
* Tuning Your Fight Against Fraud
* New Ways to Eliminate Malware
* Credit Union Virtual Security Tour
* Cyber Criminal Intelligence Programs
* Legal versus Enforceable eSignatures
* Building a Secure E-mail Infrastructure
* Next Generation Authentication Techniques
* Successful Security Awareness Training Programs
Click Here for information, agenda, reservations & more.
Samsung announced that Dell is offering the first Non-Volatile Memory express PCIe SSD in the new R920 server. NVMe is an open standard that features a scalable queue interface and efficient queuing due to the fact that the queuing workload is split between the host and the NVMe controller. The 1.6TB Samsung SFF-8639 SSD claims a sequential read speed of 3GB/s and random reads up to 750,000 IOPS.
A new report from Gartner projects worldwide combined shipments of consumer electronic devices (meaning PCs, tablets, ultramobiles and mobile phones) to reach 2.5 billion units this year, a nearly 7 percent increase over 2013. Tablets will have the biggest year-over-year increase - the worldwide tablet market is forecast to grow 38 percent. In contrast, shipments of traditional PCs are expected to see a 6.6 percent decline from 2013.
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Everyone knows that employee turnover is costly. Despite the harm it can cause to the bottom line, many organizations do not actually know how much turnover costs them. For example per FMSI data, the average cost to replace a well-trained, part-time teller, in terms of separation, replacement and training costs, plus the performance differential between a green employee and a seasoned one, is more than $2,000. One option for calculating employee attrition costs is located here: http://www.cepr.net/calculators/turnover_calc.html
FICO announced that they will release a new model this summer that they say will analyze risk more accurately. The new model is FICO's first major change in six years and is meant to address lenders' concerns about credit score consistency among the three major credit bureaus. The new formula, dubbed FICO Score9, will analyze data to see how a consumer's spending and credit habits may have changed compared to six years ago, before the recession.
Malwarebytes just announced its new Anti-Malware Premium suite, and it comes with a nice present for Windows XP users: lifetime support. Regardless of the OS, the new Anti-Malware Premium suite unites five Malwarebytes products and offers a new interface for managing them. It also comes with a new malware detection engine that uses behavior to identify suspicious software, rather than signatures that constantly have to be updated. The company recommends its Anti-Malware Premium suite as a complement to a full-fledged antivirus suite.
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NCR's APTRA Interactive Teller devices perform deposit automation and recycle cash, plus they can cash checks to the penny. Some FIs that have deployed them have converted their other ATMs to low cost cash dispensers, while simultaneously reducing traditional tellers at some of their locations as they migrate people to the ITMs. Another benefit is no more daily teller balancing - since the tellers never touch the cash, balancing the machines is a simple once a month process.
NCR expects fewer than one-third of Windows XP ATMs, or 867,000, to migrate to Windows 7 by the April 8th deadline, after which approximately 1.7 million ATMs will not be in compliance with industry security standards and will not receive regular security patches, unless the machines are specifically protected by Microsoft contracts. It could take 18 months or more for these units to be converted, with NCR noting that advanced ATMs can be modified remotely but older machines and networks will require physical visits.
Diebold and Suncoast Credit Union, supported by FIS, will enable full cash recycling at the ATM with Diebold's Opteva Flex Performance Series ATMs. This will allow the ATMs to reuse member-deposited cash for future withdrawals, enhancing ATM availability and reducing the frequency and cost of cash replenishment visits. Diebold's Opteva Flex Performance Series ATMs have a recycling capacity of up to 10,800 notes and accept deposits of up to 13,100 notes in a five-cassette configuration.
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Here is a chance to learn about real life credit union success stories from various technology vendors through the words of their clients. This week's vendor is:
and their client is:
Community Resources Credit Union
Credit Unions - if you have a vendor that you are happy with then please This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.!
Vendors - if you have a credit union that is happy with your solutions then please This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and we will give you a $100 discount on your Case Study!
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Xerox announced Safe Courier which they say will help consumers simply and securely transmit financial data - including loan, credit card applications or other financial documents containing sensitive personal financial information - directly from a smartphone. Unlike mobile check capture/deposit applications that FIs currently offer, Safe Courier enables consumers to scan and process a wide variety of documents ranging from loan applications and a multitude of forms such as money transfer requests, tax documents or account applications. In action, the Safe Courier app waits for the user to hold the smartphone camera with a steady hand in front of the document, and knows when to automatically capture the photo at the right moment. Additional technology behind the scenes automatically crops and cleans up captured pages, and stitches them together into a single document image for transmission. The service can be configured to delete files from the mobile device upon successful transmission.
Many industry observers believe that credit unions must offer text banking to attract younger members, who are more likely to be on mobile devices than anything else. According to Fiserv, 40 percent of all financial transactions will be originated out of a Gen Y — those roughly between 18 and 34 years old — household this year. Plus SMS banking proponents point to statistics that show Generation Y sends or receives an average of nearly 800 text messages a month, while by comparison, Generation X — those roughly between 35 and 50 years old — average 128 text messages a month.
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Fraud-prevention services provider Early Warning Services unveiled Duplicate Item Detection as part of their Batch Deposit Chek Service. The enhancement helps:
Video Insight has released Version 6 of its video management software (VMS). Using workspace layouts and the graphical timeline, users can navigate and playback multiple cameras, download video clips, view high risk areas on facility maps, respond to alarms, and administer the entire system.
Some security experts recommend that every credit union's social media policies include a requirement that employees leave their employment status blank when setting up a social site profile. That is because they believe that employees represent their employer 24/7/365, so what an employee says on or off the job and online directly reflects on their employer. Some people note, however, that a change in an existing employment status field may trigger an automatic notification to a person's contact list stating that they are now "unemployed."
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Security:
Addressing the Big 3: Compliance, Fraud & Cyber Security
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Digital signage provider John Ryan says that their recent survey shows that 60% of respondents had deployed digital signage in some of their branches. However, the Ryan survey also found that more than half of those who had installed digital signage were only “moderately satisfied” with it. Some marketers think that digital signage would be more useful if it was more interactive, e.g., could greet visitors by name when they enter the branch and present a relevant message. They argue that interactive signs could play an important role in the branch by sending messages to visitors` smartphones and allowing them to carry on a private conversation while standing in a branch interacting with a digital sign.
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Digital Insight announced it will expand its online banking portfolio to include Shared Access (Entitlements) and Small Business Payments, including Automated Clearing House (ACH) and Wires. Offered as part of the retail banking platform, the added Digital Insight online banking solutions are targeted at small businesses. According to the 2013 Business Internet Banking Annual Report, up to 75 percent of small to middle market businesses consider ACH and Wires to be an important functionality for online banking and 22 percent consider Entitlements as an important functionality.
It will take several years for the U.S. to achieve widespread use of credit cards with embedded chips, according Visa chief risk officer Ellen Richey. She says Visa is advocating a "chip and choice" approach to the new cards, referring to a potential hurdle where merchants prefer a chip and PIN system such as that in Europe while many FIs support a chip and signature approach. In the United States, about 7 million chip cards are already in the market, mostly issued to consumers who frequently travel abroad.
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Dimension Data announced that it is extending its portfolio of cloud-based Unified Communications (UC) services to include Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution (HCS). The company will deliver its Cisco HCS-based services to support both dedicated and multi-tenant, usage-based environments. The latest addition to the company`s cloud service is intended to complement its existing UC services for voice, video, and contact center.
Fujitsu has introduced an always-on multimedia PC for businesses that features a special power-saving mode. The Esprimo X923 all-in-one business PCs include a headset, a handset, a webcam, microphones and speakers for voice and video communications. Rather than suspending all functions, as a PC would typically do in sleep mode, the Esprimo X923 goes into low-power active mode (LPAM). In that state, it still maintains an active network connection for communications applications.
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How important is your agents' attitude and overall demeanor in protecting your credit union's brand? It is extremely important according to ICMI surveys. They note that 92 percent of consumers report that a customer service agent's perceived "happiness" has an impact on their experience with the brand, while 66 percent of consumers agree that their experience with a brand's customer service agents has a major impact on their impression with the brand overall.
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