Understanding Online Business Banking Security Threats
A great video with real life examples of online fraud:
Online Banking Solutions (OBS) Hires 25 Year Online Banking and Technology Veteran Balin to Head Product Consulting, Open Boston Office
Online Banking Solutions (OBS) Expands Market Presence, Strategic Professional Services Projects and Relationship Management Activities.
Atlanta, GA, October 25, 2011: Online Banking Solutions (OBS) announced that Mike Balin joined its management team as Director of Product Consulting to focus on custom solutions and account relationship management. Balin is located in OBS’ new Boston office and brings 25 years of industry experience as a technology innovator and banker. In addition to expanding the reach of OBS sales efforts, Balin provides pre-sale analysis and consulting services in support of OBS solutions for ebanking and secure file transfer to financial institutions.
Mike’s financial services background comprises management and development roles in online banking, treasury management, marketing, service delivery, operations and programming. This includes implementing cash management systems at Chase Manhattan Bank (now JPMorgan Chase), forming and managing what became the number four online banking business in the U.S. at the time (BayBank/BankBoston, which is now Bank of America), and product management responsibilities at Sovereign Bank (now Banco Santander). Prior experience at technology companies includes hardware, software and consumer electronics firms. During his seven years at Digital (now Hewlett-Packard), Mike’s responsibilities included international bank marketing, broadband R&D and a three-year assignment at the company’s Tokyo, Japan sales office as director of financial services marketing.
“The addition of Mike Balin in the product consulting function represents continued hiring of experienced and talented resources to drive the next phase of company growth,” says OBS CEO, Dan Myers. “OBS is all about true product innovation and Mike’s background demonstrates his ability to deliver creative technology solutions to meet the business needs of the financial services market.”
Online Banking Solutions (OBS) today announced that Technology Credit Union completed implementation of the OBS Messenger Financial Center© for the delivery of business information and payment services online. OBS Messenger Financial Center runs on the proven Online Messenger Platform, which operates on LINUX and uses private cloud technologies and Web 2.0 applications to better facilitate integration requirements and to enable scale, multi-channel services and greater security. In addition, the platform features fully integrated application, a hardened browser, and a receiver-based payments model.
Vendor Consolidation: In theory and in practice
Vendor Consolidation: In theory and in practice
Following the news last week of activities in the fintech vendor triangle (ACI, S1 and Fundtech), there suddenly appeared a flurry of articles about the wonderful benefits of vendor consolidation for financial institutions (FI’s). While we all know, this is the PR engine spinning in advance of these deals, it is probably worthwhile to explore this subject in a bit more detail.
In theory, the benefits of vendor consolidation are considered to be:
- One-stop shopping
- Multi-product discounts
- Integrated products
- Innovation
In reality, these “benefits” typically translate to:
- Less competition and higher prices
- Bundled pricing with a complex cost structure
- Product integrated “in name only” – but you can probably sign a single contract
- Less innovation, longer time-to-market, less willingness of the combined vendor in new product development
- The vendor decides what platform is best for you and when it will be updated
The consolidated vendor experience will be similar to traveling on a very large cruise ship. You aren’t going to move very fast or get anywhere quickly, but the food and entertainment will be wonderful and you will make lots of new friends while watching product and customer opportunities go by like so many smaller, faster boats.
Enjoy those user conferences!
[Two Points of View: vendor and industry analyst]
The Vendor: Joe Spatarella, VP, Sales & Marketing, Online Banking Solutions (OBS)
Innovation has been around for a long time and is almost always viewed as a key element to progress. It requires creativity, forward-thinking and, oh yeah, time. Well, we can all be creative on some level and we can all imagine our future, but if you don’t have any time to think about innovation, it all just stops there. Doesn’t it?
How can we possibly invent and introduce something new for online business banking when we spend most of our time absorbed with the clients, products, services and systems we already have? Ironically, many FI project teams are spending 1 to 2 years working to implement technology solutions that used to be fresh and new.
So is innovation relegated to interesting reading and lively conversation? Hardly.
It actually can be more a matter of personal philosophy: if you accept the fact that every ebanking product, service, process, method and procedure can be improved, and that a minimal investment of time and effort can yield great results, you will constantly innovate.
History and experience demonstrate that only a fraction of new system functionality ever gets implemented. All the resources are focused on the initial implementation and then redeployed to another critical project. The benefits of mining features and functions that were never turned on during “phase 1” can be substantial.
Drivers for innovation can be internal or external. Internal drivers include: improvement of cost, value, timing, process and quality. Even with new products, you can implement and improve simultaneously, provided you have budget and resources to accomplish the additional work. External factors tend to have a greater impact on us as they include: new technology, economic climate, client needs and requirements, integration challenges and, of course, company initiatives. Think of internal as the “you have to want to” and external as “you better find a way to get this done”. As fear can be a great motivator, you can see how external forces can drive more innovation.
So, as you can see, our ability to innovate is less about time than it is about our state of mind and willingness to go one step farther with every task, regardless of the challenges.
The Analyst: Maggie Scarborough, Managing Director, FinServ Strategies
Fire Fighting Leaves Little to Spend, Collaboration Not Frustration is Key to Execution
Clearly, the Corporate/Small Business Banking line of business at many banks is chafed by the lack of monetary commitment from the CIO’s office, which holds the budgets for technology expenditures and technology investment in tools for innovation. The irritation rages, especially when transaction fee revenue from business customers of all sizes has helped the bank withstand the ravages of the recession.
The IT reality:
After mandates are satisfied, only 23-28% of budgets remain for technology improvements. Fast rising compliance demands now eat up to 30% of IT budgets. IT budgets remain relatively flat when accounting for spending pent-up by recession-driven fiscal conservation.
IT has a lot of mouths to feed, therefore, large institution-wide projects (due to scale), tend to get the most investment, but they have the highest incidence of failure or significant delay (60%). Moreover, capability can be diluted to the lowest common denominator, causing the business banking line of business to “go AWOL” and invest in its own solutions using operating budget. This type of investment can be a business line saver to meet goals. The strategy is driving sales to software as a service (SaaS) based solutions, which IT may have never considered before, but it doesn’t do much for business line-IT relations. Moreover, because operating budget isn’t roomy, the business line may fall into the trap of buying on price rather than capability best suited to their business customers and markets. The best strategy is for the business line and IT to work together.
Business Line-IT Collaboration Best Practices:
Work together. Over the last several years we have seen increasing numbers of institutions creating business line – IT counterparts. Capital One Bank is an example of an institution, whose business line and IT work closely to achieve business and technology goals and get the most out of investment on both sides.
Keep informed by IT. Understand what IT’s plans are and inform them with your needs, influence early.
Leverage Your Solution Investment. Think of other areas of the institution that can benefit from the proposed solution – allow them to buy in with you early.
How Leverageable is the Vendor Solution? Make sure you understand how frictionless the effort is to add applications, customizations, and roll out new services to your customers. You may want to buy the solution all of the big banks are buying, but if you don’t have time and resources to support an ocean liner maybe you need a power-yacht.
Core Providers, Aren’t Your Only Provider. Core banking application vendors are typically one-stop shops when it comes to consumer and business banking, particularly in the community banking market. But, be realistic about core’s focus on business banking – it’s not their “core” revenue generator and you may get much more capability from an independent business banking provider through SaaS.
Be Realistic about Implementation. Ego, control and staff considerations may drive your desire to implement a business banking solution on the bank’s premises. Be realistic, can you support the platform as efficiently as the vendor can serve you on a SaaS implementation? Over 63% of US institutions have implemented SaaS-based solutions.
Maggie Scarborough, Managing Director, FinServ Strategies
www.FinServStrategies.com
Maggie@FinServStrategies.com
OBS Company Video
Visit the OBS Blog and view the new OBS company video
OBS Predicts Major Shifts in Online Banking
In 2011, we see major shifts in the online banking market:
Market specialization: larger banks will invest resources and technology in pursuit of global clients and vertical markets such as healthcare, while smaller commercial banks, community banks and credit unions will focus on acquiring and aggressively marketing new business banking services.
Technology: online banking services will become “channel-neutral” will a greater emphasis on wider service distribution. Efforts to improve user experience will lead to business function-specific packaging with automated processing and information integration to financial software and accounting systems. Business payables and receivables functions will drive product innovations along with increased fraud monitoring and controls.
Security: private cloud computing technology will be leveraged to provide secure environments for online banking and payments processing. Continuing issues and challenges with commercial web browsers will push both FI’s and technology providers to “private” browsers and secured desktop applications.
User Experience: FI clients will have higher expectations of online banking and payments services forcing replacement of basic “vanilla” functionality with contemporary solutions. The web channel will be used to view, research and adjust payments and information processing while the transactions will migrate to file-based processing. Overall, users will demand a uniform, consistent interface regardless of the delivery channel.
