Press Release

(New York, N.Y. – March 5, 2012) – ACI Worldwide (Nasdaq: ACIW), a leading international provider of payment systems, today announced the winners of its third annual ACI Excellence Awards which recognize successful and innovative use of ACI products in today’s rapidly changing markets. Once again, entries were judged by Gareth Lodge from Celent and Nancy Atkinson from Aite Group, along with members of ACI’s senior executive team.

The winning projects are:

Overall:

Nationwide Building Society for leveraging the flexibility of  Proactive Risk Manager™ to enhance fraud prevention and detection while minimizing the  impact of fraudulent activity on its customers

Payments Transformation:

India’s Federal Bank for the use of ACI’s BASE24® to support various person-to-person payment initiatives both for its customers and currently unbanked populations

Operational Excellence (Global Bank):

HSBC Bank for its upgrade of BASE24 to create a standardized product to facilitate compliance with new regulations and the global issue of millions of Visa debit cards

Operational Excellence (Regional Bank):

Hancock Bank for optimizing ACI Proactive Risk Manager™ to reduce false positive fraud alerts and increase productivity of its in-house fraud analysts

Meeting Market Needs:

Union Bank of India for the use of BASE24 to create an ATM-based one-stop shop for domestic remittances

Ralph Dangelmaier, president, global markets and services at ACI Worldwide said, “ACI customers continue to find new and innovative ways to address the challenges presented by a rapidly changing and demanding market. The caliber of entries for this year’s awards was higher than ever, making the judging process a pleasure. It is a privilege for us to work closely with these institutions and develop solutions that enable them to deliver critical payments services to banking customers around the world. ”

Winner - Overall: Nationwide Building Society

Achieving market-leading fraud reduction

In order to improve its fraud detection rates, minimize the impact of any fraud attempts on its customers, and to maintain its reputation for customer confidence and trust, Nationwide Building Society undertook a number of enhancements to its implementation of Proactive Risk Manager from ACI Worldwide. By including richer, more comprehensive customer data and industry fraud alerts within Proactive Risk Manager’s rules and aggregates, and improving its real-time analysis and authorization functionality, Nationwide has created a highly-sophisticated level of fraud detection that has placed the building society at the forefront of card fraud detection globally. 

“Nationwide Building Society works hard to deliver on its core values of putting members first, rewarding relationships, inspiring trust, delivering great service and exceeding expectation. These values are behind our continual focus on minimizing the impact of fraudster activity on our customers. ACI Proactive Risk Manager, with its inherent flexibility, has enabled us to maintain that focus and plays a critical role in enabling us to live up to our values,” said John Verrechia, senior manager, fraud analytics at Nationwide Building Society. 

Winner – Payments Transformation: The Federal Bank Ltd

Work to Transform Payments in India with BASE24^®

India’s Federal Bank has implemented two distinct but related schemes designed to improve access to banking channels and to replace cash transactions with more efficient and cost effective electronic payments. The first project is a partnership with the newly established Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) to facilitate transactions from traditionally unbanked individuals by using their unique identifying number and biometric information. The second is India’s first implementation of the Visa Personal Payments service that allows Visa Debit cardholders to receive domestic and cross-border remittance payments in near real-time.

“India’s fast growing economy and the expansion of its middle class means that banking is changing rapidly. However, it is important that the entire population can participate in our country’s growth through access to modern banking facilities. Through the development of these services on BASE24 we are able to meet the real needs of existing customers as well as the population who are currently unbanked. The advantages will be felt both by our organization and by the country as a whole,” said Mr. T. S. Jagadeesan, Chief General Manager, Federal Bank.

Winner – Operational Excellence (Global Bank): HSBC Bank plc

Mandate management for BASE24^®
 
HSBC Bank in the UK has relied on BASE24 to handle debit card transactions for more than twenty years. Over that time HSBC had developed more than 5,000 customisations to the core product, creating a system that took time, effort and expensive resources to respond to changing external requirements. To maximise investment already made in hardware, HSBC undertook a project to upgrade to the latest version of BASE24 and to use standard product for all MasterCard BankNet and VISA VisaNet interfaces enabling it to use standard ACI compliance mandate code making it easier and more cost effective to apply future fixes and upgrades.

“BASE24 has long been a critical part of the payments infrastructure at HSBC UK. But with 5,000 bespoke customisations it had become rather unwieldy and resource-intensive. By integrating the standard BASE24 mandates into our version of the system, we have been able to extend the life of our BASE24 implementation on a highly cost-effective basis, while continuing to meet the demands of a rapidly changing market,” said Anton Godfrey, Systems Specialist, HSBC Bank Plc.

Winner – Operational Excellence (Regional Bank): Hancock Bank

Maximizing the Potential of ACI Proactive Risk Manager™
 
To offer its customers the best possible protection against fraudulent activity, Hancock Bank wanted to ensure that it was using Proactive Risk Manager from ACI Worldwide to its fullest capacity. Specifically, the bank wanted to reduce its rate of false positives on some of its alerts and to utilize its SQL database to recover data held by PRM for analysis following large-scale fraud incidents. After working with an ACI consultant, the bank was able to improve rule writing and reduce its false positive rate by 25 percent, thus enhancing customer relationships and improving the productivity of its in-house fraud analysts.

“After just one on-site consultation, Hancock Bank was empowered to use ACI Proactive Risk Manager to its fullest capacity. Keeping on top of the changes in fraud is a continuous commitment.  The more we can learn from the valuable data held by Proactive Risk manager, the more successful we will be in identifying and preventing fraud activity. We have already seen dramatic enhancements in all areas of our fraud prevention and detection efforts and look forward to further improvements in the future,” said Corinne Buchholz, the Hancock Bank vice president who manages the company’s electronic banking services.

Winner – Meeting Market Needs: Union Bank of India

Remittances@ATMs using BASE24^®

Thanks to its huge population and rapidly growing economy the value of India’s domestic remittances was worth US$13 billion in 2010 and has an expected growth rate of 15 percent year on year. Of these remittances, 90 percent are channeled through banks. The Union Bank of India has created a one-stop shop for domestic, inter-bank remittances through its extensive network of ATMs. The solution gives customers the option of three distinct remittance services and enables them to send money to their chosen beneficiaries throughout the country using a familiar and convenient channel.

“The ATM was the obvious choice of remittance channel for us because of the inherent strengths of the BASE24 solution that underpins all ATM transactions. BASE24 supports essential customer validation and provides watertight security. More than that, the ease with which we could customize our ATMs to support Remittances@ATMs has helped us create a familiar, easy-to-use solution for customers who regularly need remittance services,” said Lalit Sinha, General Manager at Union Bank of India.

2012 Excellence Awards Celebrate Global Payments Innovation

Nancy Atkinson, senior analyst at Aite Group said, “The entries to this year’s awards reflected the critical challenges that financial institutions face round the world, including protecting customers against rising fraud levels, encouraging greater use of electronic payments, and introducing new services in an increasingly competitive environment. The diversity and scope of the projects presented to us was awe-inspiring and an indication that financial institutions are working hard to develop elegant, innovative and inventive responses to the challenges they face.”

Gareth Lodge, senior analyst at Celent said, “Each award in the ACI Excellence Awards gives us a snapshot of individual projects and responses around the world; when taken together they build up a rich picture of an industry that is engaging with its customers, developing new services and transforming the way we think about payments. For each winning project there were many equally worthy contenders, and the real victor is the industry itself, particularly in such uncertain economic times.”

To see descriptions of our shortlisted entries and for more information about the awards, please visit www.aciworldwide.com/awards.

If you require a high-resolution version of the ACI Excellence Awards 2012 logo, please email press@aciworldwide.com

ACI Worldwide powers electronic payments for 1,700 financial institutions, retailers and processors around the world, with its broad and integrated suite of electronic payment software.  Over 50 of the top 100 world banks, over 170 processors and over 250 retailers around the world rely on ACI software to process consumer payments, manages wholesale payments, and protect their customers from financial crime. To learn more about ACI and understand why we are trusted globally, please visit www.aciworldwide.com. You can also find us on www.paymentsinsights.com or on Twitter @ACI_Worldwide.

Contact details

Shirley Macbeth
ACI Worldwide
781-370-3600
press@aciworldwide.com

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