Financial & Economic Blog

It seems as though the consolidation trend continues.  I’ve just learned that our software vendor who provides our consumer lending platform has been purchased by a large technology company.  What is fascinating is that IA Systems was purchased by a leader in the data processing field named Open Solutions (OSI).  OSI is a direct competitor of the in-house system used by my credit union.  That now makes us a client of OSI.  Wait, we were already a client of OSI because OSI purchased the Raddon group earlier in the year.

A few years ago, our main data processing vendor was acquired by Jack Henry and Associates (JHA).  JHA was largely focused on the banking industry before diving into the credit union space by purchasing Symitar.  Symitar and OSI, in my opinion, continue to be the market leaders in the credit union data processing space based on numbers alone when looking at the top credit unions based on assets.

Corillian, our internet home banking provider was recently purchased by CheckFree, a leader in the online bill pay market place.  Their combined organization will serve 21 of the top 25 financial institutions, more than 40 million online banking consumers, and more than 31 million electronic billing and payment consumers.  Those numbers are mind boggling!

Last month Clarke American, our check order processor purchased another check order vendor, John Harland.  Clarke American Corp. was renamed “Harland Clarke Holdings Corp”.

The credit union market as a whole continues to see credit unions merger, creating larger institutions with greater economies of scale for provding member service.  My credit union successfully acquired another credit union in April that allowed us to expand into a new market (Pueblo).

It will be interesting to see how things continue to unfold over the next few years.