FinServ Blog

Fair Isaac Checks Credit Globally

No hiding from Fair Isaac, apparently. The provider of analytics and decision management technology (i.e., the technology that makes your loan more expensive if you’ve missed a payment here and there) has announced that version 6.1 of its Blaze Advisor

Eye-Charts – You’d Think Presenters Were Paying By the Screen

At SIA Risk in New York the other day, presented put up dense black and white PowerPoints with the usual comment about eye charts. Really. How long has PowerPoint been around? Can’t presenters understand they don’t have to pay by the screen – if the info

Security -- Where Does Terrorism Rank Among Threats?

In a survey of British security chiefs, terrorism ranked as their least important concern, behind crime, IT security, fraud, and natural disasters, say Rachel Briggs and Charlie Edward, authors of The Business of Resilience in an FT op-ed piece. They

Matching Data Access to Computing Speeds

What happens when the latest processors are outpace data delivery? Delays. High latency and poor scalability often pose challenges that significantly impact a financial services firm's profitability and risk exposure. The 'GemFire™ on Intel® for Financial

XBRL -- SEC Looks for Volunteers

The SEC is prodding companies to start reporting their financial data in a format called XBRL, nicknamed interactive data. Annual and quarterly reports filed this way can be "read" by computers, allowing investors to pull revenue, net income or any other

Hellllooooo! Anybody There? Microsoft Gets Communicative

Last week at the SIA tech conference, Microsoft and BT announced a communications alliance (see below). Now HP and LG-Nortel have come out with their plans to work with Microsoft. Jeff Raikes, president of Microsoft’s business division, explains what’s

ClearCube Keeps the Heat on HP in Blades

ClearCube Technology plans to launch two PC blade servers, in a bid to compete with Hewlett-Packard Co. for customers in finance, insurance, hospitals and the military. Both blades will use Intel Corp. chips and will have enough power to run Microsoft

TEMENOS T24 to run on Microsoft front to back

TEMENOS Group, a provider of integrated banking systems, has announced that TEMENOS T24, its modular core banking system, will add support for Microsoft SQL Server 2005. TEMENOS T24 now works with key Microsoft products and technologies running from the

Fin Firms Deployed Riverbed’s Steelhead for Fast Operation of Microsoft Apps over WANS

Warburg Pincus LLC, and Greenhill & Co. have purchased and deployed Riverbed's Steelhead(R) wide-area data services (WDS) appliances to enable global collaboration and IT consolidation in their fast-paced, email- and document-intensive work environments.

Tough Play -- Unfazed by Rejection, CDC Makes Third Bid for Onyx

CDC is continuing to pursue Onyx because it has complementary CRM capabilities that neither Pivotal nor c360 have been able to provide, particularly in such industry verticals as insurance and government. The first offer made little financial sense for

More companies join SEC XBRL Pilot

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced today that Automatic Data Processing, Inc., Ford Motor Company, Ford Motor Credit Company, and Radyne Corporation have agreed to participate in the pilot program to use interactive data in their financial

Envision Expands, Offers University Facilities to Clients

Envision Financial Systems, which develops Microsoft-based stock transfer software, has announced plans to relocate its world corporate headquarters to Irvine , California . The new headquarters will provide room for further growth in headcount as well

Unisys Wins $11.6 M 5-year Support Contract for Netherlands’ REAAL Microsoft-based Insurance Apps

REAAL will consolidate its existing support contracts and suppliers to one contract with Unisys which would reduce their number of service suppliers from 20 to 1. REAAL said that it hopes to achieve significant reductions in cost through consolidation.

Portrait Software Sales Up, Fiserv Channel Helps

Portrait Software has announced that sales of CRM software are up 42 percent for the first half of 2006 over year ago results, led by OEM sales through Fiserv, which more then tripled from last year. Portrait is a Microsoft Gold Partner. http://www.portraitsoftware.com/__data/assets/pdf_file/5726/PST_Preliminary_Results_06_FINAL__3_.pd

BT and Microsoft to Partner for Trading Communications

· BT has announced that it is working with Microsoft to develop a unified communications capability that will allow participants in the financial trade cycle to share information regarding their presence, and preferred means of communication in real time.

RFID For Securities Doc Management?

Great for Wal-Mart, but for the securities industry? Kevin Ashton of ThingMagic argued at the SIA that as documents become fewer they also become more critical, and RFID can be a way to locate them quickly, identify redundancies and show up gaps in documentation.

NYSE and ARCA – Preparing for a Challenging Future

What happens when a small, fast, high-powered firm – ARCA – meets a 200-year old nonprofit exchange – the NYSE? Steve Rubinow, CTO of the NYSE Group, didn’t go into details of the challenges, but it is clear he isn’t going to be the one to surrender.

Securities Industry Revenue Grows, but Not Profits

The securities is making more in gross revenues but not in profits, largely because of compliance costs, said Mark Lackritz, president of the Securities Industry Association. He said the industry spends $25 billion on compliance. One result – firms are

Misys & Microsoft at SIA

Misys Banking Systems showcases Misys Opics Plus at SIA 2006 Misys Banking Systems, a global leader in banking software and solutions, is demonstrating the new .NET powered Misys Opics Plus at Microsoft’s booth #2211 at SIA 2006. Misys Opics Plus is the

Microsoft Packs Its SIA Booth with Innovation

The two hottest bits of Microsoft news at SIA are the new versions of Excel, including a server version with security and audit controls, and Windows Computer Cluster Server, a high-power, low-cost, low-complexity entrée into high performance computing.

MS Compute Cluster Seen As Challenge to Linux in HPC

OpenSource Magazine sees Windows Compute Cluster, which Microsoft will demo at SIA in New York this week, as a potential threat to Linux in high performance computing -- a market that IDC says grew 24 percent last year. Microsoft thinks it stands a shot

Smart Thinking on Bill Gates

The most intelligent bit of analysis on Bill Gates and Microsoft's role hasn't appeared in any of the recent news stories, which are pretty wishy washy historical rehashes. It was in a piece by Richard Waters of the Financial Times early in the week,

Micrososft Will Unveil New Trading Platform at SIA

Microsoft will unveil a trading platform next week based on the new version of Windows for supercomputers released last week and a new Excel spreadsheet due later this year. The platform will be shown during a Securities Industry Association technology

Intel, Microsoft and Sony Working on Contactless Payments

Intel is working with Microsoft and Tokyo-based BitWallet to drive use of Sony's FeliCa contactless IC card technology for Internet transactions. Intel is teaming with both Microsoft and Bitwallet - which provides the EDY contactless payment system -

Who Needs Trade Shows?

If it’s the third week of June it must be time for SIA. At least the complaints are a little different from those about ACORD and BAI where vendors say all they see is vendor badges. At SIA people complain about the New York souvenir seekers who sign

Take a Break -- Suggestions for Boston and New York

All work, no play -- you know the rest. You probably exemplify it. So I am posting some suggestions for Boston -- TechEd and the Partners Summer -- and New York -- SIA, et. al. on some pleasant diversions...feel free to contribute more. www.techandfinance.com

Banking – Let’s All Innovate Together

But don't anybody do anything too different. TowerGroup built an umbrella theme around innovation that we at WFS could be proud of – it’s the sort of grand theme we create for sponsored advertorial pieces. Is much happening? It must depend on where you

SOA Fits Where?

Service Oriented Architecture would appear to be one way to mix flexible front ends with data sitting on legacy mainframes. Merrill Lynch post 9-11 looked to its costs of coping data from the mainframe to SQL Server and Sybase without creating a new set

Gissing In the Microsoft Booth at SIA

Gissing Software, which delivers advanced software and solutions to enable the routing and transformation of real-time market and trade data, will demonstrate how Gissing RealtimeXL can enable current Microsoft Excel users to improve their front office

Collaboration Key to Business Success

Collaboration has twice the impact of a company's aggressiveness in pursuing new market opportunities and is five times as significant as the external market environment according to a new study “ Meetings Around the World: The Impact of Collaboration

AdviceAmerica Scores High with Celent

AdviceAmerica, a provider of financial planning software, has been ranked in the top quartile by Celent for wealth management. Using its ABCD methodology, Celent evaluated the ten leading financial planning vendors and ranked AdviceAmerica among the top

New Comprehensive Core Banking System on .NET

SlaterLabs, based in Madrid and the UK , is developing an end to end core banking system on Microsoft Windows and Microsoft .NET. The system called Etude Programme, will be built in modules. The initiative was lauded by TowerGroup Analyst Robert Hunt

Insurity Moving to .NET

Microsoft and Insurity announced a multiyear strategic alliance at ACORD. Insurity (which as you might have guessed from the name is an insurance industry technology provider) will move its applications to .NET. “Insurity is the only legacy company that

IVC Full Speed Ahead at ACORD

Insurance industry momentum to Microsoft, at least if booth banners at ACORD are anything to go by. The Insurance Value Chain made its debut in Las Vegas with 60 participating partners, and it was hard to avoid the bright IVC banners on partner booths