IBS Journal May 2015


Who’s bought what? WHO? Bank of Southern California WHAT? Nupoint core system from CSI


US-based banking software vendor, Com- puter Services Inc (CSI), has signed its first Californian customer for the Nupoint core banking system, Bank of Southern Califor- nia. The project kicked off earlier this year and product mapping phase has just been completed. The bank is working towards a ‘big


bang’ go-live date of 12th June 2015, says Tony Divita, SVP, Bank of Southern Cali- fornia. Training is also now underway. The bank’s team is excited about the new pos- sibilities that CSI’s platform will bring, he says. The incumbent solution, FIS’s Bank- way, was so outdated and required so many manual workarounds that the users had to put in long hours and were feeling overworked. Nupoint will bring automa- tion and this is a welcome change, Divita states. The workforce can now concen- trate its efforts on growing the business and expanding across southern California, he says. Earlier this year, the bank raised $7.2 million in capital towards its growth strategy. Also, last year Bank of Southern Cali-


fornia acquired a small entity, Frontier Bank (trading as El Paseo Bank), and it came with Fiserv’s Premier as the core system, so there was a need to standardise and bring the two banks onto one platform. Plus, a con- tract with FIS was nearing its end of term. Divita comments that both FIS and Fiserv (its Premier system being one of the most commonly used across the US’s West Coast) were evaluated, but felt that their offerings were ‘not really ready to accommodate the requirements of a community bank like ours’. He adds that both Fiserv and FIS are being cooperative with the current project of replacing their systems at the bank, ‘they understand that perhaps we were not a right fit for them’. There was an official selection process,


initiated in spring last year, with six provid- ers receiving the bank’s RFP. It was a stand- ard set of ‘tried and tested’ vendors, says


18 © IBS Intelligence 2015 www.ibsintelligence.com


Divita. The main requirements included the system’s flexibility, high levels of automa- tion and broad reporting capabilities. ‘We were looking for a more technology- oriented supplier,’ he adds. The bank also wanted to keep the hosted set-up. Zaid Akhter, regional vice-president at CSI, com- ments that ‘in the West Coast, with its well developed infrastructure, over 90 per cent of community banks are going for the host- ed option’. Nupoint will support all the main


front-to-back office operations at the bank, including internet and mobile banking and document imaging. It will interface with the bank’s remote deposit capture solution provided by Fundtech (now part of D+H Corporation). As mentioned earlier, this is the first


core banking software deal for CSI in Cali- fornia (although the vendor has a number of non-core customers there already), and prior to signing, the bank’s team attend- ed the CSI user conference in Florida to gather feedback from users from differ- ent US states. ‘The feedback was positive, and we were reassured by the fact that some clients have been using the system long-term, some for over 20 years,’ Divita recalls. The bank also liked that the vendor is medium-sized and felt that it would be


more attentive and responsive to smaller customers such as Bank of Southern Cali- fornia. He is complimentary about the ven- dor’s attitude: ‘CSI is treating us the same as it does its bigger customers. It has provided us with a dedicated account manager and even changed the customer support hours to suit our time-zone. We cannot recom- mend the CSI team high enough.’ Akhter feels there is a cultural fit between the two entities, as both adhere to the ‘ethical cul- ture, integrity and a focus on customers and employees’. Divita is confident about hitting the


go-live deadline, but is realistic about the challenges the project faces. There is a resources constraint, as the bank is working on the implementation without addition- al third parties, but Divita notes that CSI is providing its resources to help out. Data- base cleaning is also a major issue, he com- ments, that takes a lot of resources, time and effort. ‘The database of the acquired bank is particularly dirty.’ Then there is also a challenge of delivering the right mes- sage to the bank’s customers, to ensure they understand and accept that there are changes ahead. There is always someone out there who does not want to change, Divita muses, ‘but we must be transparent with our clients’.


‘We were looking for a more technology-oriented supplier.’


Tony Divita, Bank of Southern California


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