Article

Expo broadens banking scope

Foreword Financial combines eight events into one for '07 expo.

September 16, 2007 by Tracy Kitten — Editor, AMC

The Foreword Financial Expo wrapped in Chicago Sept. 7, and show organizers say it was one of their better-attended events. Around 1,260 exhibitors and attendees - a mix of bankers and other financial-services executives, in addition to providers of payment, technology and operations solutions - signed up, a 10 percent to 15 percent increase from previous years' events, said Mike ter Maat, principal and director of program development for Foreword Financial. (Read also,Foreword Financial Expo opens with 'customer experience' keynote.)

 

"We have about 90 companies here this year as exhibitors, and we have quite a bit of overlap between our exhibitors and our attendees," ter Maat said.

 

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The reason for the show's growth this year is two-fold, said Bill Sell, vice president and general manager of events for Pulvermedia, which in September 2006 acquired Foreword Financial and now owns and operates the expo.

 

First, Pulvermedia combined what had been eight separate conferences into one. And, it pulled all of those events together in Chicago, a more centrally located venue, Sell said. Pulvermedia also for the first time began selling individual exhibit-hall passes, for attendees who only had an interest in browsing booth exhibits.

 

Photograph by Tracy Kitten The Foreword Financial Expo was held in Chicago Sept. 5-7.

"This is the first year we've had the expo as one large conference," Sell said. "Now, in this particular format, we expect to make this an annual event."

 

Chicago could be the expo's permanent home, Sell said, depending on exhibitor and attendee feedback.

 

"It's still too early to know if Chicago is the best location for this event, but that's what we're leaning toward," Sell said, adding that he expected to host the expo in a different Chicago venue in 2008.

 

Focus shifts to mobile payments, the electronic channel

 

Foreword's Operations Conference was its oldest, running for more than 20 years in various manifestations, ter Maat said. And the Bank Card Conference, Foreword Financial's second-oldest, was typically held around this time of year. The combination of those two conferences likely attracted most of this year's attendees, ter Maat and Sell said.

 

The other conferences - Bank and Technology; Brokers & Asset Managers Conference for Operations and Technology; Financial Services Outsourcing Forum; Financial Services Security Forum; Mobile Financial Services Forum; FSTC Fall Open Forum; and Operations Conference for Securities & Trust - small on their own, also benefited from the combination, Sell said.

 

Photograph by Tracy Kitten Foreword Financial set up shop in Chicago's new McCormick Place West, a venue that touts having the largest ballroom in the United States.

Pulvermedia also opted this year to run its Fixed Mobile Convergence Conference in conjunction with the expo.

 

"Fixed Mobile Convergence is still a separate conference, but there is some connection here, because, in the mobile space, they also are looking for ways to cut technology costs, etc., so we decided to hold them together," Sell said.

 

But while Mobile Convergence focused more on telco-related topics, Foreword Financial's mobile discussions rightly revolved around mobile payments and financial services.

 

Tom Llewellyn, executive vice president and chief information officer of Broadway National Bank San Antonio, discussed opportunity in the mobile-banking space for enhanced customer self-service during his presentation, "Mobile Banking: A Component of Your Self Service Strategy." Llewellyn discussed the bank's mobile Internet-banking solution and how it complemented the bank's overall self-service strategy - part of the bank's quest to create a "virtual branch."

 

Photograph by Tracy Kitten Show exhibitors work Sept. 5 to set up their booths. Foreword's expo was the first trade show to be held in the new McCormick Place venue.

Over the last 12 months, Broadway has successfully moved 56 percent of its 20 million customer transactions to the so-called "electronic" channel, Llewellyn said. Just more than 250,000 of the bank's total customer transactions are now conducted over the Internet.

 

"The virtual branch is more than Internet banking and a Web site," Llewellyn said. "It is a personalized customer portal that provides the customer a self-service channel that eliminates the reason to walk into the branch or call into the call center."

 

Broadway Bank has cut operating costs and improved customer satisfaction, he said.

 

Identifying ways to cut costs through technology was the focus of most of the expo's presentations this year.

 

During their Wednesday panel discussion about the cost-reduction benefits of Check 21 technology and image exchange, Bank of Lancaster's Richard Abbot and JPMorgan Chase's Tom Showalter talked about the benefits technology can bring to both small and large financial institutions.

 

Abbot, who serves as the senior vice president and chief operating officer of Bank of Lancaster, a $330 million community bank in rural Virginia, said his bank is benefiting from the convenience and cost reductions associated with branch and remote capture.

 

"We have used Check 21 to help make our bank more competitive," he said. "It's helped us compete with the large banks, and it's something any small bank can do. We wanted to harness Check 21 early and use it to re-engineer our retail and operational processes."

 

Shortly after Check 21 was enacted in October 2004, Bank of Lancaster began moving toward image-capture implementation. By early 2006, the bank was offering remote capture to merchants.

 

Exhibitors at this year's show included:   AccuTech Systems Corp. Allbridge Solutions Allegiance Inc. APCON Asset Control Authentify Inc. BBH Infomediary BLM Technologies Inc. BluePhoenix Solutions Broadridge-Investor Communication Solutions Broadridge-Securities Processing Solutions C&A Associates Inc. C.L. Frates And Company CA Inc. Carlson Leisure Travel Services Check Point Software Technologies ChesapeakeSystem Solutions ClairMail CMC Computer Research Inc. Computer Sciences Corp. Consumer Benefit Services Inc. Delta Data Software Digital Check Corp. Digital Resolve Discover Network Dynamic Card Solutions EVault Inc. Fidelity Investments Financial Information network Inc. Financial Information Inc. First Data Corp. First Southwest Co., Clearing Division Fiserv CBS Worldwide Fiserv EFT Fiserv Lending Solutions FSTC Global Financial Services Global Relay Communications Inc. Global Software Inc. GoldenSource Corp. Goldleaf Financial Solutions Hal Systems Corp. HTC Global Services Inc. Information Technology Inc. Infovisa Innovest Systems Interactive Technologies Inc. International Market Recruiters LexisNexis MagTek Inc. MasterCard Worldwide Matrix Settlement & Clearance Services Metavante MexicoIT MIR3 Inc. Monitise Americas Neoris NessTechnologies NeuralIQ Northern Trust Oakbrook solutions Oblicore Inc. Open Solutions Inc. Pershing LLC Phoenix Systems Inc. Pivotal CRM Proxytrust Quarksoft RSA, The Security Division of EMC Scalent Systems Secuware Inc. Sinapsis Sitel Softforum Inc. SQN Banking Systems State Street Corp. Strategix Performance Inc. SunGard SupportPoint SWIFT Tango/04 The 41st Parameter Inc. The Bank of New York Mellon Corp. The Bankers Bank The Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. Tricerion Inc. TSYS Union Bank of California US Biometrics Varolii Corp. Wausau  Wolters Kluwer Financial Services WorkLight World Software Services ZL Technologies Inc.

"After testing remote capture with a few friendly businesses, we created an e-services suite of products that included online, Visa merchant and remote capture," Abbot said. "That helped us pull all of those services together and offer more to our clients. We really started marketing the product in April/May of 2007, and within three months it has changed our organization. We really were a sleepy bank before. Now we're probably signing deals with nine out of the 10 customers we demo our solution to."

 

The bank is now using remote capture for everything, he said, giving it the ability to extend its deadlines for deposits across numerous channels, including the ATM, online, telebanking, drive-up and teller, to 4:30 p.m. every day.

 

"And we were the first in the marketplace to extend our hours (of deposit) with remote capture," Abbot said. "It really gave us an advantage over players of all sizes in our market."