Fiserv, Inc., the provider of financial services technology solutions, announced that United Central Bank, a $2.6-billion Texas-based community bank with locations in eight states, has selected the Premier(R) bank platform from Fiserv to provide an outsourced, enterprise-wide technology solution. Named this year’s #1 National Preferred Lender by the Small Business Administration (SBA), the bank chose Premier in part for its versatile lending solutions. Premier processes more SBA loans than any other core banking solution in the financial industry.
With the July 2009 acquisition of $1.2-billion Chicago-based Mutual Bank, United Central Bank nearly doubled its size and gained 12 locations in Illinois, New York and New Jersey. “It’s been a great acquisition for us,” said Luke Lively, president and chief executive officer of the bank. “It’s a win for everyone, especially our customers. We’re making loans and supporting the community like they’ve never been served before.”
A multi-lingual community bank serving primarily the Asian community, United Central Bank’s mission is to provide financial services to meet the needs of its diverse customer base, which has traditionally been underserved. “Many of our customers would not have been able to obtain loans without a bank like United Central Bank,” said Lively, adding that approximately 35 languages are spoken throughout the organization.
Because Premier is highly scalable and robust, United Central Bank is confident Fiserv will be able to support its future growth and acquisitions. Converting both the United Central Bank and the former Mutual Bank systems to one common, new platform is a tall order, but one the bank is committed to taking on. “If what we were looking for was the short-term, easy route, it might have been tempting to stay with one of the previous systems,” said Tim White, chief operations officer for the bank, “but we were looking for a long-term partner. Fiserv has the scalability to serve us as we continue to grow. It’s never been a measure by dollars for us, but a measure by customer and client satisfaction.”
United Central Bank chose a comprehensive Fiserv solution that includes account processing services, Internet banking, cash management, electronic document management, bill pay, EFT, wire transfer processing, branch and merchant source capture solutions, and other Fiserv products. The multi-product solution implementation represents solutions from all five of the Fiserv core competencies: Processing Services, Customer and Channel Management, Insights and Optimization, Risk and Compliance, and Payments.
The bank expects its new partnership with Fiserv to enhance its customers’ banking experience, as well as improve internal efficiencies. “The integration afforded by Fiserv means that we can reduce transaction times, which in turn reduces the time a customer needs to be in a branch,” said White, adding that the seamless integration of ancillary Fiserv products dispenses with multiple logins.
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