Corillian, Getronics Partner For International Banking Solution

Corillian, a provider of online banking, payments and antifraud solutions, has partnered with Getronics (No. 25 on the 2005 VARBusiness 500) to provide a broader offering of online and branch-banking services to financial-services clients in the United States and internationally. Under the agreement, Getronics will resell and implement Corillian's Voyager platform and online banking applications as an addition to its own retail branch banking solution.

"First and foremost, we're always looking to do more for our big bank clients, to bring additional products and services to those we've served well for years," says Alex Hart, CEO of Corillian. "We'd also like to identify clients like those we've served historically in the U.S. outside of the U.S. Getronics is such a large global player, we thought this would be a great partnership."

Hart says the partnership was driven by the benefit of serving international clients without having to invest in the infrastructure up front.

"They can provide local consulting and support services, and they'll also be doing the sales and marketing for us internationally," he says. "Instead of going out and trying to duplicate Getronics' network of international sales and services people, which didn't make a lot of sense, we decided we could get a lot of leverage very quickly as partners."

Michael Kerr, vice president of channel renewal at Getronics, says that many financial services firms are actively engaged in "channel renewal"--improving the way customers interact with banks through each channel.

"If you're trying to provide a set of services and applications to a bank, you need to be able to offer the bank a best-of-breed solution," Kerr says.

He adds that because both Getronics' and Corillian's solutions are Microsoft-.Net-based, they can easily integrate and interoperate as a "best-of-breed" solution. Both companies will work to jointly prospect for new customer opportunities.

"Often, banks do one thing--either replacing an Internet banking solution first and then the teller solution, or the other way around," Kerr says. "This is a chance to alert the customer to the other solution."