Whitney National Bank Taps IBM Software to Improve Customer Service, Reduce Costs
IBM announced that
Whitney National Bank
,
an independent business bank in U.S. Gulf South, is deploying IBM
technologies to integrate and speed the delivery of specialized
services to its growing customer base. The benefits include providing
new levels of efficiency and intelligence to both the bank and its
customers.
To
compete in today's dramatically altered financial playing field, banks
must employ smarter banking strategies to achieve new levels of risk
control, efficiency and customer service. Whitney will be able to
extract key intelligence to obtain a full view of a customer's
transaction history -- including a comprehensive analysis of sales
trends and costs -- to deliver more customized services and offerings.
Increased visibility to this account data also empowers the bank's
customers to regulate their activities and expenses.
IBM's
new solutions are also helping drive new operational efficiencies.
After acquiring more than a dozen banks, Whitney faced the challenge of
consolidating customer information and reducing IT applications such as
those supporting checking and savings account management, online bill
payment and loan processing. In the past, if a customer requested a
report of daily transactions, the information had to be pulled from a
dozen different systems that could take a few days to deliver. That has
now been reduced to hours and minutes.
By
deploying the IBM Banking Industry Framework, a portfolio of pre-built
financial reports and dashboards, Whitney will cut its banking
applications in half and be able to retrieve customer information
instantaneously. The bank will also improve service levels by
automating routine processes while reducing costs and eliminating
redundancies across the enterprise.
"Rather
than a collection of disparate solutions, IBM has provided a
comprehensive solution spanning process design and service frameworks
to reporting that are helping us achieve our growth objectives while
arming us with the insight to become a more responsive and agile bank,"
said Thomas "Stan" Limerick, Whitney's Senior Vice President and
Director of Strategy and Architecture, Operations & Technology
Division. "As we expand, we are confident that the infrastructure we
have in place will support both the high expectations our customers
have for us and we have for ourselves."
The bank is also migrating to IBM Power System with DB2 in its data centers in Allen, Texas and Prattville, Alabama.
These new systems provide Whitney with greater flexibility, lower risk
and improved customer service. The new Power System enables Whitney to
cut disaster recovery times between its data centers from hours to
seconds.