ING continues to demonstrate how to move into new markets effectively, using state of the art, end to end systems. Finextra: ING Direct USA licenses Metavante mortgage processing technology ING Mortgage will be deploying the Web-based Wholesale Origination Website from GHR Systems, a Metavante Lending Solution, integrated with its Loan Origination Studio product. GHR’s Wholesale Origination Website is a comprehensive, interactive and secure, broker-centric system designed to provide self-service for wholesale loan personnel. Because the system includes GHR’s automated decision engine, brokers can obtain instant eligibility, pricing and underwriting decisions. Brokers can also efficiently submit and manage an entire pipeline … Continue reading ING Direct USA licenses Metavante mortgage processing technology

Courtesy of FinanceTech, here are five technologies that you must know about.  As Bankers, we cannot survive without understanding the technology that supports our strategies.  Summaries noted below from this excellent article.  The ones to pay attention to, in my humble opinion are Ajax and NAND drives.  The others are more enterprise benefit focussed, but these two exhibit customer benefits.

1. Ajax:  consider online banking running on Ajax.  Instantaneous click response, no page wait times, smooth screen transitions (vs today’s old page goes, and new one loads)
2. NAND: customers will be using very high performance computers, and technologies like NAND coupled with home wireless networks, and high speed network connections, mean they will not tolerate bank sites that do not provide immediate response (refer 1. – Ajax)

5 Technologies You Need to Know About

We’re (FinanceTech) taking our best guess as to which emerging technologies will have the most impact on computing in the very near future. Over the following pages, you’ll read about five specific advances in hardware, software and Internet tech that should be on every technophile’s, Web strategist’s and CTO’s radar.

Continue reading “5 Technologies You Need to Know About”

Considering how much Sun have been part of the growth of internet, they remain able to make incomprehensibly stupid comments, like this one. It used to be Scott, who had a certain initimable quality, but this …. Sun CEO defends business value of Java | CNET News.com “Java is the Internet,” Schwartz says in S.F. We all have many Sun boxes running in our banks, and whether we know that or not, we have been reliant on this company.  But I do not think we like, need or want Java to be the core of running things on our systems.  … Continue reading “Java is the Internet,” Schwartz says in S.F.

The reactions to the conference are quite interesting in their polarisation.  Seems everyone got something, generally characterised as something that fitted with their own paradigms, and of course the tendency is to discount the rest. Personally I told myself to have an open mind before I got there, and that paid off.  I even learned from the “web is free” thing, listening to some some very smart people, from Amnesty, and GiveMeaning. Observations: bloggers are amateurs – most didn’t exist 2 years ago.  Their presentation skills for large scale conferences will be mixed;  and thats ok. Steve Rubel looked like … Continue reading Final reflections on MESH 06

The conversation finished on software as a service relative to online banking of all things. Chris is speaking about how Banks can facilitate the financial aspects of peoples lives. One he mentioned is the enablement of the secondary relationships between people.  He and his girlfriend use a web service that reminds them who last purchased dinner.  What if a bank did it, and enabled payment between them to settle, when they chose.  These are new ways to think about online banking. Relevance to Bankwatch: There are ways for banks to provide services, that we haven’t even thought of yet! Technorati … Continue reading New thinking about online banking

Last presentation at MESH and I am listening to Matt from WordPress speak about his philosphy.  There are five people in the company, supporting 187,000 blogs, including this one.  Every customer feedback goes to every employee, and they are obsessed with ensuring the interface is as intuitive as possible. His partner on the panel is Chris Messina, and he is speaking of software as being too complex, and being all about making is less, and making it act as expected at every opportunity.  He is talking about microformats, that will solve very basic problems for software users on the web.  … Continue reading MESH – update 3

Article from FinanceTech describes the benefits that Banks really need, and that should come from SOA.  The article is not too technical, and its something Banks really need to get handle on, to get out of the legacy system problem most have.  In addition, its a way to get through merger amalgamations of technology. Service Oriented Change Web services are gaining more attention thanks to growing interest in service-oriented architecture (SOA): a collection of self-contained services that communicate with each other and perform business processes through defined description languages or standards. This architectural strategy is a services layer, or interface, … Continue reading The benefits of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)

Art Gillis continually writes good stuff, that should be wake up calls to all Banks. This post though goes to the top of he heap. Every Bank CIO should read this, and should immediately act. In 1987, the Wall Street Journal published a study that evaluated technology in nine industries. Banking got the lowest grade, C-. Nineteen years and about 152 bank tech conventions later, technology is better. We now have GUI front ends. But the back end is still based on '60s technology. What never appeared in the evolution of bank technology was the proverbial clean sheet of paper. … Continue reading The long term consequences to shareholder value of sticking with old technology