Horizon – takers


As well as community banks, FIS gained some of the ‘Bankers Banks’, including that of Atlanta in 2005. There were 21 bankers banks in the US, chartered specifically to serve the needs of community financial institutions. The Bankers Bank of Atlanta had more than $1.9 billion in assets at the time of signing and a customer base of more than 1100 community financial institutions. Tom Bryan, president and CEO of The Bankers Bank,


said: ‘We believe that Horizon has the breadth and depth of functionality, especially as it relates to its robust lending capabilities, we need to fully serve our bankers’ needs and to successfully position our organization for this type of growth.’ The deal at The Bankers Bank included the Acquire


document management system and the ALLink middleware solution for interfacing existing ancillary solutions with the Horizon platform. The Bankers Bank took Horizon on an outsourced basis, with the data being processed in Fidelity’s data center in Albany. FIS has tended to keep customers on up-to-date releases.


For instance, a release, 2010.01, in May 2010, was supposedly live in 87 per cent of customers by the end of the year. The first to upgrade were Plymouth, Mass-based Rockland Trust Bank and New Jersey-based The Provident Bank. The is an annual user conference, InfoShare (not specific to


User list Horizon


Example users:


Americana Community Bank Bank Star One Bank Star Farmers Deposit Bank First Virginia Community Bank Guaranty Bank & Trust Monument Bank Ohio River Bank Provident Bank


Redwood Capital Bank US Ameribank US Metro Bank


Horizon), and regional Horizon user groups. Florida-based BankFirst signed for Horizon in 2007, having seen assets grow from $424 million in June 2007 to $612.7 million by the next June. To continue this growth, the bank decided to switch from processing in-house, which it had done since it was founded in 1989, to outsourcing its core processing. It also decided to ‘single-source’, taking all systems, both core and ancillary, from only one vendor. It was using the Kirchman-derived Bankway, which now resided with Metavante and would end up with FIS in 2009. Five processors were considered. John Catan, senior vice-


president and director of management information systems at BankFirst, explained, ‘We found that FIS’s customer service and the ease of use of Horizon were better. If the software is wonderful, but difficult to use, then it will be hard for our salespeople and tellers to provide good service. Based on our discussions with reference customers, the strong customer service that we felt FIS would provide was also a deciding factor.’ There was a ‘big bang’ conversion in February 2008, which went smoothly. In September 2011, US head-quartered Aliant Bank signed a multi-year agreement for Horizon core processing solution, document management, EFT processing and integrated card management.


US Financial Services Technology Market Report | www.ibsintelligence.com


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