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2009 Innovative Solutions Award Winners
The Innovative Solutions Awards recognize companies that have introduced or significantly enhanced products that help community banks become more efficient, expand their capabilities and, ultimately, better serve their customers. Voted on by BankNews readers, more than 1,000 votes were tallied and the four recipients of this year’s awards vary widely in size, scope and geographic location. Congratulations to this year’s ISA winners!
Recovery Solutions is a company that provides its enrolled financial institution clients with a turn-key mobile disaster recovery solution. It recently enhanced its satellite technology package offered in connection with its fleet of mobile bank facilities to allow full business resumption within hours from the time of notification.
New satellite technology added to the program includes a Mobile Operations Center and Portable Fly-a-Way solution. These enhancements allow quick and easy setup so the bank can communicate via core processors, Internet or voice over Internet protocol. Features include fully encrypted satellite networks with 3DES security; support for virtual private network communications to securely connect to branch offices or host computer systems; and increased bandwidth that provides high-speed data transmission at rates of 2MB download and as much as 768KB upload speeds.
Recovery Solutions’ fleet of mobile bank facilities provide satellite communication dish networks, satellite-based telephone systems, PC workstations, various banking printer equipment to mirror a client’s internal structure, as well as a diesel generator for an alternative power source. This combination of technology, equipment and facility allows the company to deliver a turnkey solution to clients. Financial transactions can be conducted seamlessly for bank customers under nearly any circumstance.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Open Solutions -- DNA Version 2.1
Passageways LLC -- Lobby Manager
In this challenging operating environment, community banks are under pressure to retain existing customers, build new relationships and fund growth-oriented initiatives without affecting service quality or increasing budgets. It’s a good time for community banks and solutions providers to hit the re-set button in terms of all of the partnership possibilities — everything is up for discussion, including services that weren’t even on the docket for consideration in the past.
Introduced in early 2009, the FIS Innovative Outsourcing Solutions model allows each bank to find its custom outsourcing solution by choosing from a menu of “top 10” cost-savings options, including back-office services; e-care; business analysis; collections; chargeback processing; fraud investigation and resolution; development and support; quality assurance and testing; remote infrastructure management; and IT outsourcing.
Benefits include increased efficiencies, a stronger focus on core competencies and cost savings up to 40 percent. By providing expertise, scale and resources, FIS’ right-shoring models give community banks the benefits of global resources without compromising their local advantage.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
BancVue -- Kasasa
Wolters Kluwer Financial Services -- Disclosure Manager
WAUSAU Financial Systems’ Paperless Branch solution reduces costs by capturing images in the branch wherever they occur, from over-the-counter transactions at the teller line to loan origination, new accounts, customer service and human resources documents, regardless of the loan or new account platform and archive. The products that make up the solution interface to or integrate with a financial institution’s existing technology. Paperless Branch eliminates the need to process paper documents, resulting in increased operational efficiencies, permanent reduction of transportation costs and an ROI in less than 12 months.
In early 2009, WAUSAU expanded this solution to include ATM ImageManager and extended the automation functionality to the safety deposit box process within a financial institution. On the ATM side, the solution verifies ATM images with the ATM switch and works with image-enabled ATMs to ensure images are delivered safely to the back office. The entire process eliminates envelopes, cash tickets and deposit slips. For the safety deposit box process, the solution replaces paper access cards with electronic signatures and photos, ensuring customer identity and making it simple to retrieve records of who accessed a box and when.
The solution streamlines processes by capturing signatures and automating the creation of any electronic documents required to perform these tasks.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
InfoSight Inc. -- Email Privacy Protector
Banc Intranets LLC -- DirectorsLink
Jointly developed with Bluepoint Solutions, the tMagic Teller Capture system is fully integrated with Open Solutions’ enterprise-wide core processing technology, allowing tellers to capture checks in real time at the point-of-presentment — the teller line. Using tMagic Teller Capture enables institutions to reduce manual data entry, prevent errors and improve overall efficiency through immediate transaction verification at the teller line. It captures both the front and back of checks, automatically detecting the courtesy amount, legal amount, MICR line, and presence of a signature and date. If any data is questionable or missing, tMagic immediately alerts the teller. As a result, tellers can correct or reject information with the customer still present.
After the core system accepts a transaction, the receipt data is used to ensure the core system and scanned items are in balance. Items are then made available for image cash letter generation and archiving. Having the ability to balance each transaction set enables tellers to shorten end-of-day closeout.
tMagic Teller Capture also protects against business interruption with a store-and-forward capability. With store-and-forward, information is immediately stored and can then be forwarded, allowing the teller to save time if a server malfunctions and avoid lengthy backup and recovery procedures.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
First ROI -- INMO
ClairMail -- Mobile Banking with Proactive Actionable Alerts