Microsoft today announced that it is packaging and selling the technology behind its award-winning Microsoft Investor Web site to financial institutions worldwide.
“With the Investor Platform Kit, we’re offering financial institutions a proven, compelling and customizable way to offer products and services to their online customers,” said Lewis Levin, vice president of Microsoft’s Desktop Finance Division.
The announcement came at FinNet ’98, a two-day, Microsoft-sponsored conference in Bellevue, Wash., attended by nearly 400 information technology specialists and executives from banks, brokerage houses, insurers and financial industry software firms.
During the conference, Microsoft also announced that Hewlett Packard (HP) would support Windows Distributed interNet Applications architecture for Financial Services (DNA FS), an industry framework that allows software applications to “talk” to each other and the legacy mainframe systems in place at many financial institutions. HP, one of the largest computer suppliers in the United States with more than $42 billion in sales, was the second company this week to indicate support for the framework. On Tuesday, Policy Systems Management Corporation, a $582 million financial software company with more than 1,000 insurance and financial services customers, also announced it will incorporate support for Windows DNA FS into its products.
The Investor Platform Kit will allow financial institutions a variety of options in constructing a compelling online presence — from branding Investor and offering their own content, services and links, to simply adding components like the Investor Stock Ticker or Portfolio Manager to an existing Web site.
In other news during the conference:
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Crestar Bank demonstrated how applications from Corillian and TransLink enabled the bank to quickly and easily develop and deploy products and services to its customers across multiple delivery channels.
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Integrion Financial Network and Microsoft Corp. announced plans to jointly develop a connection between consumers using Microsoft Money and Integrion’s Interactive Financial Services (IFS) platform. The server technology, which translates OFX messages into GOLD Standard messages, will be available for the fall release of Money 99.
