Flurry of Bank Pilots Portends Key Growth Year for Integrion
- Russell Redman
Energized by a trio of new pilots, the Integrion Financial Network is poised to make key strides this year in getting its Interactive
Financial Services (IFS) electronic banking platform operational at banks.
Thirteen of Integrion's 18 owner banks and 50 bank clients of the former Visa Interactive, which was acquired by Integrion last
summer, are due to at least be testing IFS by year-end, said William M. Fenimore Jr., chief executive officer and managing director
at Atlanta-based Integrion.
Banc One Corp. and NationsBank - Integrion's maiden pilot banks - already have gone live to customers with the IFS platform.
"This is a critical year to get these banks' user volume to a significant level and, in 1999, to launch off that base. That's our
objective," Fenimore said.
So far, all Integrion bank pilots have involved owner banks. PNC Bank, First Chicago NBD and Michigan National Corp. began
in-house IFS pilots in December. Royal Bank of Canada, Comerica and Washington Mutual have announced plans to implement
IFS later this year but, at presstime, had not specified a timetable. This month, Mellon Bank is due to kick off an employee IFS
pilot, and it expects to bring customers on-line in June, a Mellon spokesman said.
Sketching a rough timetable, Fenimore said PNC, Michigan National and First Chicago aim to bring customer transactions on-line
through the IFS middleware in the second quarter. Mellon, Royal Bank, Comerica and Washington Mutual likely will wind down
development of their IFS infrastructures in the second quarter and soon after launch pilots, enabling customer transactions by early
fourth quarter.
"And while that is all going on, we're also working to convert the Visa Interactive customers to the Integrion solution. That will be a
'painless' conversion for them, but they will be up on the IFS platform in the latter part of the year," he added. Visa Interactive had
about 60 bank clients, including some Integrion owners.
"[Overall] that is on schedule with what we originally planned to do when we launched Integrion," Fenimore noted.
The latest round of bank IFS implementations represents a big boost for Integrion, which has drawn some fire from some bank
executives and industry observers as being slow in coming to market.
"With the majority of our banks coming on the [IFS] platform this year, I think people would be hard-pressed to say we're not doing
what we set out to do," said Emily Mendell, manager of planning and communications at Integrion.
"Last year, we really had to build the platform, and that took some time to make sure that it was scalable and industrial-strength,"
she explained. "Now that the platform is built, you'll see our development cycle and implementations moving much quicker."
Columbus, Ohio-based Banc One was the first bank to link up customers through Integrion. It piloted IFS with consumers in Ohio
and Texas starting last April and, since June, has made it available to all customers. The bank has connected an average of 300
customers a day for electronic banking through IFS, and that figure could top 1,000 with marketing initiatives, said Bruce Luecke,
general manager of interactive delivery systems.
"It is our primary engine for on-line banking," Luecke explained. "We have a full array of basic banking functionality. You could
pay bills; transfer funds between accounts; get balance and other information from deposit, credit and loan accounts; and get
electronic customer service. So all the basic transactional needs are there."
IFS went operational at NationsBank in December, and the Charlotte, N.C.-based bank now will employ the middleware for its
fledgling Internet banking service.
"We are live now [with IFS] and are beginning the rollout of our NationsBank Online product," said Chuck Hieronymi, senior vice
president. "We're rolling it out market by market. It will be available to most of our Eastern markets in the first half of 1998 and
through the rest of the franchise in the second half of 1998."
At presstime, NationsBank Online provided basic account access - balance inquiries to various accounts and summaries of a
customer's full bank relationship - but did not allow funds transfers or bill payment.
"We'll be on the second generation of NationsBank Online later this year, where we'll be adding more product support, such as
bank card transaction details and [funds] transfer capabilities," Hieronymi said. "We'll also have additional functionality for
customer service and e-mail."
First Chicago's 20-person IFS pilot only involves bill payment. Once the Internet interface is finalized and tested with more
employees, the bank plans to open it up to customers in June - when it also expects to launch its Web bank, developed in-house,
said Richard Schurr, vice president and manager of electronic bill payment. First Chicago stands to be the first Integrion bank to
offer Internet bill payment, noted Tom Kelly, bank spokesman.
Michigan National, Farmington Hills, Mich., is testing account access, balance inquiry and funds transfers via IFS, said Michael
King, director of alternative banking. The bank, too, is working with Integrion to craft the Web interface for its upcoming virtual
bank, and it plans to test IFS for telephone banking through a voice-response unit (VRU), he added. Michigan National, at
presstime, offered home banking through Intuit's Quicken and Microsoft Money personal financial management (PFM) software.
"What we're looking at there is extending the bill payment to include the telephone. We don't offer that today," King said.
"Certainly, we have a good deal of calls going into our VRU system, but the extension is so we can offer bill payment via the PC
software packages, the Web and the telephone."
In adopting IFS, Toronto-based Royal Bank is migrating its PC banking with MECA Software's Managing Your Money (MYM)
and its Web bank to Integrion's Gold messaging specification, said Chuck Wilson, senior manager of direct banking networks. And
once home banking is linked to Integrion, the bank will look to integrate phone banking.
"It's definitely on our radar screen," Wilson said. "You have to take this in steps. Fortunately, we've built our financial processing
platform for the telephone, Internet and PC off our banking machine platform. So it does give us the opportunity to do it in phases
and to do it quickly so we can reuse the code across the other channels."
Via Integrion, PNC Bank plans to enable account access and basic banking transactions through its Web site, which at presstime
did not offer such functionality, said Martin Evancoe, vice president and manager of on-line banking. The Pittsburgh-based bank
provides PC banking through Intuit's Quicken, BankNow and QuickBooks plus MECA's MYM.
"Integrion should ultimately be the hub for all these things, which would mean that if you sign on one place, you get the same
balance information no matter where you came on. That isn't true today because most PFMs aren't real-time. Almost everything is
batch," Evancoe explained. "But Integrion brings us real-time. We'll get it on the Web and, later in the year, we'll hopefully be able
to get all of our PFMs in."
At presstime, PNC was testing IFS with a group of employees, allowing them to view statements plus make balance inquiries and
funds transfers. "This is a big deal to us," Evancoe said. "It's a major strategic push for PNC Bank in 1998, but we have to do some
careful preparation." |
