IBS Journal January 2016


WHO? Freedom Credit Union WHAT? Jack Henry’s Symitar suite of products


Pennsylvania-based Freedom Credit Union has selected a suite of systems from Jack Henry & Associates’ Symitar division. Freedom Credit Union, which holds


around $637 million in assets, selected the systems due to its desire to consolidate its third-party systems into a single provider, according to Jack Henry. All of the new platform will be deliv-


ered via the vendor’s Ease outsourcing model, part of the Episys core processing system. On top of the Ease delivery model and


the Episys core system, Freedom Credit Union has also selected Synpasis for mem- ber relationship management, Advanced Reporting for Credit Unions and Synergy Enterprise Content Management. Converting to Symitar, according to Freedom Credit Union CEO John King,


‘will alleviate a great deal of regulato- ry and technology-based burdens’ from the credit union’s everyday processes. Through using Ease, he adds, Freedom Credit Union is hoping to expand the services it can offer to its 63,000 strong customer base.


Bank in the Badlands? First Premier Bank has had an interesting past. In 2010, US news site The Daily Beast


reported on its practices and how Presi- dent Obama announced sweeping reforms in the US credit-card industry that would ‘hold the credit-card companies account- able’ and end ‘deceptive, unfair tactics that hit responsible consumers with unreason- able costs’. First Premier Bank had a Mastercard


offer that carried a 59.9% annual interest rate, charged $120 in first-year fees and limited a customer’s credit line to $300. The bank’s piece of plastic was


named ‘the nation’s worst credit card’ by Consumers Union, a non-profit group in the US. In addition to this lovely accolade,


Travis Plunkett of the Consumer Feder- ation of America, said: ‘Some customers who are not terribly sophisticated are still being taken to the cleaners by the fine print.’ The bank is not alone in this activity,


and First Premier executives defended themselves by arguing to The Daily Beast that ‘they are doing a service to financially troubled customers who otherwise could not obtain any sort of credit card’. Antony Peyton


WHO? ICA Banken WHAT? Tieto’s outsourcing services


Tieto and ICA Banken have signed a five- year outsourcing agreement in which the former will support the operations and back office services of the latter’s securities business. Tieto will be taking full responsibili-


ty for the operations and administration of Swedish ICA Banken’s SaaS-based securities management and business process out- sourcing (BPO). The deal, according to Vahid Zohali,


president of the banking sector at Tieto, confirms the company’s role as a long-term partner. Tieto is the largest IT group in the Nor-


dics, with products and services spanning back office systems, digital solutions, pay- ments and outsourcing. It has also recently signed a partnership agreement with core banking software vendor Temenos (see p11 for details).


Alex Hamilton © IBS Intelligence 2016 www.ibsintelligence.com 23


Solna, Sweden © TK, Wikipedia


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