Six Leading Financial Institutions Select Security First Technologies' VFM Investments Solution
July 26, 1999 09:00 AM
ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 26, 1999--
-- Financial Institutions Position Themselves for Convergence of Financial Industry --
Security First Technologies Corporation SONE today announced that it is currently implementing its Virtual Financial Manager(TM) (VFM) Investments application for six leading financial institutions: Royal Bank Financial Group, Security First Network Bank, Synovus Financial Corp., two U.S.-based, global financial institutions, and one of the country's largest insurance providers. These financial institutions have either licensed the product or are running the solution through the Security First Technologies Data Center.
VFM Investments is fully integrated with Security First Technologies' VFM suite, enabling institutions to offer online transactional brokerage capabilities within a consolidated view of their customers' existing accounts. Through VFM Investments, customers can transfer funds from their checking and savings accounts to brokerage accounts and purchase stocks in real-time. Customers can monitor market dynamics and track how those changes impact their portfolios throughout the trading day. The application also provides a reporting capability for portfolio positions and trade activity information, a real-time synopsis of the value of the customer's security positions and other account details.
Further, VFM Investments enables a financial institution's customers to: buy and sell stocks in cash and margin accounts; purchase, redeem and exchange mutual funds; view all holdings in the portfolio screen with updated prices; view all brokerage transactions chronologically; and retrieve research via a link to an external research provider.
Jeff Ayton, Security First Technologies' vice president of global sales, said, "By bringing banking and brokerage capabilities together into a single interface for end users, our client institutions can strengthen their relationships with some of their most profitable customers. It also allows our financial institution customers to keep a step ahead of the online, brokerage-only competitors. The more accounts an end user has with a financial institution, the higher the odds that the financial institution will retain the end user long term, which is one of the key challenges that financial institutions face in today's highly competitive financial services market. We also realize that financial institutions need to offer the broadest range of online services in order to remain competitive. To this end, the rapid adoption of VFM Investments provides further evidence that delivering an integrated banking and brokerage solution will very soon be common practice for financial institutions."
Synovus Chairman and CEO James H. Blanchard said, "We're using the Internet as a strategic channel to offer our customers Service Beyond Banking. VFM from Security First Technologies gives us an innovative and superior tool to harness the Internet and provide our customers every service with one relationship. VFM is a tremendous complement to the services of our card-processing company, Total System Services, Inc., and the combination will give our customers a financial advantage in life.
About Security First Technologies
Security First Technologies SONE builds, delivers and operates integrated, transactional and brandable Internet applications for financial institutions. Security First Technologies' secure solutions are available for in-house implementations or can be outsourced to the Security First Technologies Data Center. Security First Technologies also offers training, product integration and customer service center outsourcing. Security First Technologies, through direct sales and channel partnerships, has agreed to provide software applications and technology to more than 100 financial entities. Security First Technologies can be reached at www.S1.com.
On May 17, 1999, Security First Technologies announced agreements to acquire FICS Group, N.V. and Edify Corporation in separate transactions valued at approximately $1.5 billion. The transactions, which are subject to various conditions and approvals, are expected to position Security First Technologies as the preeminent provider of financial portal solutions to the financial services industry.
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