Bottomline Technologies (NASDAQ: EPAY), a leading provider of collaborative payment, invoice and document automation solutions, today announced its customer, Fifth Third Bank, has been recognized by Celent as a ‘Model Bank.’ Fifth Third Bank was recognized for its use of the WebSeries Global Cash Management Platform to enhance the efficiency and security of wire initiation processes within its banking center network.
Published in March, the report, “Celent Model Bank 2008: Case Studies of Effective Technology Usage in Banking,” highlights the best-practice achievements of 16 leading banks. Since implementing WebSeries in 2005, Fifth Third Bank has deployed Bottomline’s functionality to more than 10,000 users across its banking center network to automate wire initiation, foreign draft creation and check disbursement management processes at the branch level. As a result of automating these core banking center processes, Fifth Third Bank has significantly reduced exposure to risk by eliminating the verbal exchange of account information and improved straight-through processing (STP).
“The most successful approach to an effective payments operation includes a payment strategy that considers all of the financial institution’s payment types, channels, markets and geographies served, and customer types,” said Jacob Jegher, a Senior Analyst with Celent’s Banking Group and the report’s author. “By presenting these examples of best practices and their results, we’ve strived to illustrate the degree to which banks are making effective use of technology today and provide inspiration to banks contemplating how to improve their own technology strategies.”
“To be recognized by Celent as a ‘Model Bank’ serves as validation of our strategy and decision to deploy Bottomline's WebSeries platform,” said Julie Elberfeld, Commercial CIO, Fifth Third Bank. “We sought a solution for this initiative that would not only introduce new levels of automation and security into our wire initiation processes, but also easily align with our enterprise architecture requirements. Bottomline has exceeded our expectations on all fronts to help us achieve our goals.”
To help accommodate high-volume domestic and international payments and transaction reporting, banks and financial institutions rely on Bottomline’s award-winning platform to provide the flexibility and scalability required to address the cash management challenges of corporate clients of all sizes. Offering clients a single Web-based platform for originating and managing payments activity worldwide, this modular solution leverages STP capabilities, including multi-currency, multi-language data integration, international payment standards, BIC and IBAN validation, and support for double-byte characters for clearing into Asia.
“In an industry in which competition is truly global, it’s imperative for banks to possess a vision for how technology can become a positive factor in the fight to retain customers and compete more effectively in the marketplace,” said Rob Eberle, President and CEO of Bottomline Technologies. “Through the combination of our platform capabilities and domain expertise, we’re able to help customers such as Fifth Third Bank bring to market successfully the types of products and services their business demands.”
About Fifth Third Bank
Fifth Third Bancorp is a diversified financial services company headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio. The Company has $111 billion in assets, operates 18 affiliates with 1,231 full-service Banking Centers, including 107 Bank Mart locations open seven days a week inside select grocery stores and 2,214 ATMs in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Florida, Tennessee, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Missouri and Georgia. Fifth Third operates five main businesses: Commercial Banking, Branch Banking, Consumer Lending, Investment Advisors and Fifth Third Processing Solutions. Fifth Third is among the largest money managers in the Midwest and, as of December 31, 2007, has $223 billion in assets under care, of which it managed $33 billion for individuals, corporations and not-for-profit organizations. Investor information and press releases can be viewed at www.53.com. Fifth Third's common stock is traded through the NASDAQ® National Global Select Market System under the symbol "FITB." Member FDIC.
About Bottomline Technologies
Bottomline Technologies (NASDAQ: EPAY) provides collaborative payment, invoice and document automation solutions to corporations, financial institutions and banks around the world. The company’s solutions are used to streamline, automate and manage processes and transactions involving global payments, invoice approval, purchase-to-pay, collections, cash management and document process automation. Organizations trust these solutions to meet their needs for cost reduction, competitive differentiation and optimization of working capital. Headquartered in the United States, Bottomline also maintains offices in Europe and Asia-Pacific. For more information, visit www.bottomline.com.
Bottomline Technologies, WebSeries and the BT logo are trademarks of Bottomline Technologies, Inc. which may be registered in certain jurisdictions. All other brand/product names are trademarks of their respective holders.
Cautionary Language
This press release may contain "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors. Among the important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements are competition, market demand, technological change, strategic relationships, recent acquisitions, international operations and general economic conditions. For additional discussion of factors that could impact Bottomline Technologies' financial results, refer to the Company's Form 10-K filed September 2007, Form 10-Q filed February 2008 and any recently filed Form 8K's. Any forward-looking statements represent our views only as of today and should not be relied upon as representing our views as of any subsequent date. We do not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking statements.
Contacts:
Billy Balfour, 603-501-5219
bbalfour@bottomline.com
