CheckFree Investment Services Launches Real Time Account Opening as First Phase of NewGen Program with Merrill Lynch
March 10 2004 - 9:00AM
PR Newswire (US)
CheckFree Investment Services Launches Real Time Account Opening as
First Phase of NewGen Program with Merrill Lynch -- Initiative
Drives Innovation and Efficiency in the Separately Managed Account
Industry Toward a 50 Percent Cost Reduction Objective -- ATLANTA
and JERSEY CITY, N.J., March 10 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- CheckFree
Investment Services, a division of CheckFree Corporation , today
announced the availability of APL Workflow for New Accounts.
Workflow for New Accounts is the first moduleof the multi-million
dollar upgrade of CheckFree APL, called NewGen. APL Workflow for
New Accounts will streamline the investment management process by
enabling the industry's first real-time new account open function
between managers and sponsors. Bob Rubino, a director of Merrill
Lynch's Managed Accounts Solutions Group, explains, "Funding an
account instantly gets an investor's account working for them
immediately. The elimination of paper-based and e-mail
communications improves accuracy and timeliness. The benefits over
batch processing are significant." CheckFree APL Workflow for New
Accounts is being implemented initially in conjunction with Merrill
Lynch to support its ongoing efforts to drive operational
efficiencies for its managers. Three leading money managers in the
Merrill Lynch Consults program are beta testing the functionality.
The goal of the broader NewGen initiative is to enhance the
reliability, efficiency, business process workflow, and usability
of APL. As part of this process, CheckFree Investment Services is
leveraging the Six Sigma experience and methodology that drives the
industry-leading internetwork efficiency of CheckFree's electronic
billing and payment platform. By applying the Sigma discipline to
the SMA market, CheckFree Investment Services will increase quality
and value to position customers to deliver increasing service and
value to investors. Today, the average separately managed account
costs $250 per year to maintain. With the NewGen program, CheckFree
intends to cut those costs by 50 percent. The next functional areas
to be addressed in the NewGen platform are Galaxy Trading,
Reconciliation and an Advisor Workstation. As reported in the
November MMI Meeting, the Separate Account Market is projected to
grow to $4 Trillion by 2007. To support that growth, Investment
Managers need to streamline their operations and reduce costs.
CheckFree's investment in New Gen will enable the efficient growth
of the industry. CheckFree also continues to investin its network
hub supporting the communications among Managers and Sponsors. Over
the last year, more than 300 new interfaces have been established
with Extract, Transform, & Load (ETL) capabilities yielding
improved efficiency for managers and sponsors. Cheryl Nash,
formerly vice president of the CheckFree Investment Services
brokerage business unit, is leading the project team of dedicated
professionals working on the New Gen project. Work on platform
conversion began 18 months ago with extensive participant
requirement research and technology development. The project will
span the next two to three years. About CheckFree APL Today,
CheckFree APL is the leading separately managed accounts
infrastructure that provides remote processing services to sponsor
firms, money managers and financial advisors for the automation of
investment management, trading, portfolio performance and investor
reporting. CheckFree APL's open platform enables approximately 39
of the top 50 Wall Street (sponsor) firms and 36 of the top 40
managers to interface with each other, and operate in a
straight-through processing environment. Institutional money
managers also use CheckFree APL to enter and maintain account data,
manage trades and measure portfolio performance. About CheckFree (
http://www.checkfreecorp.com/ ) CheckFree (NASDAQ:CKFR) is the
leading provider of financial electronic commerce services and
products. Founded in 1981 and celebrating its 23rd year in
e-commerce, CheckFree is comprised of three divisions: Electronic
Commerce, Software, and Investment Services. CheckFree launched the
first fully integrated electronic billing and payment solution in
1997. In the quarter ended December 31, 2003, more than 12 million
consumers initiated online payments through services offered by
CheckFree's Electronic Commerce division. Electronic billing and
payment is available through more than a thousand financial
services organizations, including banks, brokerage firms, Internet
portals and personal financial management (PFM) software. At these
sites, consumers are able to electronically receive and pay
essentially all the bills most common to a U.S. household.
CheckFree delivers 18.5 million e-bills each quarter. CheckFree
Investment Services provides a broad range of investment management
services to thousands of financial institutions nationwide. The
division's clients manage more than 1.4 million portfolios totaling
more than $700 billion in assets. CheckFree's Software division
provides solutions through three operating units: CheckFree ACH
Solutions, CheckFree Financial and Compliance Solutions (CFACS),
and CheckFree i-Solutions. CheckFree ACH Solutions provides
software and services that are used to process more than two-thirds
of the nation's nine billion Automated Clearing House payments,
while CFACS provides reconciliation, financial messaging, workflow
and compliance software and services to more than 600 organizations
in the banking, brokerage, investment management, insurance and
credit card industries, among others. CheckFree i-Solutions is the
leading provider of e-billing and e-statement software and services
for both business-to-consumer and business-to-business
applications. Certain of CheckFree's statements in this press
release are not purely historical, and as such are "forward-looking
statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation
Reform Act of 1995. These include statements regarding management's
intentions, plans, beliefs, expectations or projections of the
future. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties,
including without limitation, the various risks inherent in
CheckFree's business, and other risks and uncertainties detailed
from time to time in CheckFree's periodic reports filed with the
Securities and Exchange Commission, including CheckFree's Annual
Report on Form 10-K for the year ended June 30, 2003 (filed
September 15, 2003), and Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the
quarter ended September 30, 2003 (filed November13, 2003) and Form
10-Q for the quarter ended December 31, 2003 (filed February 12,
2004). One or more of these factors have affected, and could in the
future affect CheckFree's business and financial results in future
periods, and could cause actual results to differ materially from
plans and projections. There can be no assurance that the
forward-looking statements made in this press release will prove to
be accurate, and issuance of such forward-looking statements should
not be regarded as a representation by CheckFree, or any other
person, that the objectives and plans of CheckFree will be
achieved. All forward- looking statements made in this press
release are based on information presently available to management,
and CheckFree assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking
statements. DATASOURCE: CheckFree Corporation CONTACT: Media, Judy
DeRango Wicks, +1-678-375-1595, or , or Investors, Tina Moore,
+1-678-375-1278, or , both of CheckFree Corporation Web site:
http://www.checkfreecorp.com/ Company News On-Call:
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