Metavante Corp. of Milwaukee has created a division to offer corporate cash management products and raided the competition for an executive to run it.
Observers called the Metavante Corporate Treasury Management division, whose formation was announced Tuesday, a sign that Metavante is eager to court large banks. They said it would also help the Marshall & Ilsley Corp. unit market to its historic stronghold of midsize banks, where cash management is increasingly popular.
Paul Danola, the president of Metavante’s financial solutions group. said that treasury management is “very critical for banks,” because it is an important, and growing, source of revenue. “We wanted to put more focus and investment into this particular area.”
Metavante has hired Gary Kasik, a longtime employee of Fiserv Inc., to be the president of the division. Most recently Mr. Kasik was the president of Fiserv’s Banklink, which offers cash management software. In his new job, he will report to Mr. Danola. The two have a long history; they worked together at Citicorp Information Resources, which Fiserv acquired in 1991.
The division will include Vicor Inc., the Richmond, Calif., payments software vendor that Metavante is buying. The deal, announced last month, is expected to close this quarter.
Though Metavante already has several cash management products, the Vicor product line would be “an important cog” in the division, Mr. Danola said.
Bob Meara, a senior analyst at the Boston research and consulting firm Celent LLC, said cash management is an important source of revenue for banks.
The large companies that use the products are often “banks’ largest and most profitable customers,” he said. “Typically, it is where an awful lot of the money is, and an awful lot of the profit.”
Metavante’s historical strength has been with small banking companies, he said, but it hopes to reach larger ones with its cash management products. “Metavante is wanting to swing with the big boys.”
The Vicor deal likely will play a key role in Metavante’s efforts to expand in the big-bank market. Vicor offers automated lockbox processing software, and its customers include Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co., U.S. Bancorp, and PNC Financial Services Group Inc.
Metavante plans to offer a hosted version of the Vicor software. Mr. Meara said that many treasury management products, especially lockbox ones, traditionally have been offered only for in-house use; offering hosted versions likely would appeal to Metavante’s small and midsize bank customers.
Remote deposit capture is one of the most popular cash management offerings these days, he said. However, the traditional cash management offerings have been centered on initiating payments and keeping track of account balances; remote capture, which corporate customers use to convert paper checks into images and transmit them to the bank for deposit, generally comes from vendors that have focused on item processing.
Metavante, which has purchased several image technology vendors since 2004, created its Image Solutions division in May to house them.
“They have arguably the broadest line of services” in the industry, Mr. Meara said.
Because companies can use remote capture to transmit images from anywhere, the technology is also making it possible for banks to offer cash management products to customers outside their branch network, Mr. Meara said.
“The playing field gets a lot more level if the logistics of making a deposit can be made to vanish, and check imaging does that,” he said.
