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"Multi-channel integration is garnering the attention of a growing number of banks. The question is not if but when."

"A Celent survey indicates that over 80% of major banks worldwide are currently engaged in or planning channel integration projects. Many top tier institutions aim to achieve full integration by 2007."

"As bank systems become inexorably more complex, the cost-in monetary, resource and organizational terms-of developing and maintaining multiple delivery systems becomes ever more prohibitive. At the same time, banks are trying to construct cohesive strategies for focused customer service and sales out of the jumble of technology and business silos typical of modern banking. Leading banks are concluding that multichannel integration can address many of these challenges, and many have initiated long-term projects to enable real-time, uniform access to customer and transaction data across all delivery channels."

"Remus Brett, senior analyst at Forrester, estimates that over the next three years large European banks will have to invest a further £50m to £300m in IT to support multi-channel banking. However, if done properly, this should reduce transaction costs by 30%."

"Most banks agree that they inevitably will integrate their desperate technology systems. Many banks, like Citizens Bank, view the branch and call centers as the core from which to begin their channel integration projects."

"Services-Oriented Architecture will be the key, emerging, nonfinancial competitive differentiator for top-tier banks worldwide from late 2003 through 2005 (0.8 probability). […] Midtier banks that do not deploy SOA risk serious competitive disadvantage by 2007 (0.8 probability)."

"The core business logic of most transactions is the same whether performed by a call center rep or an online customer. […] Financial institutions and technology providers should take better advantage of object-oriented, component-based solution sets. By using these architectures, they can leverage a common code base across different access channels with different roles and rules based on the user."

"As interest rates inch up, banks are scrambling to develop marketing and IT strategies geared towards maintaining strong growth in originations. Next-generation solutions will provide users with greater work process automation capabilities and better integration with third parties, thereby eliminating many of the manual processes still in place today. A large portion of the typical loan process is still conducted via phones and faxes, creating bottlenecks and unhappy customers, who expect greater speed. New solutions will also be better integrated with the front end, creating greater straight-through processing."

"Large European banks will spend, on average, €115 million over five years to comply with Basel II."

According to Datamonitor's report "Credit risk management and Basel II in European financial services: Getting ahead in the B2 implementation space", European banks will spend $1.9bn in 2004 and $2bn in 2005 on Basel II compliance.

"Whereas 2003 was clearly a hype year for the compliance IT market, we believe that 2004 and beyond will bring real spending on IT to automate and integrate new compliance processes."

"Given the similarities in the applications and infrastructure components required to comply with new regulations impacting financial services firms, including the PATRIOT Act and Basel II, we estimate that a key long-term trend in the market for compliance solutions will be application and infrastructure integration."

"IT has to be a huge determining factor during due diligence. Some mergers lose half or more of their value due to integration delays. The faster the merged company can implement the integrated technology, the more successful the merger will be. M&A deals often fail to live up to expectations when executives neglect the complexity involved in IT integration."

"Through 2006, IS organizations that combine mature component-based development methods with model-driven or pattern-based application development frameworks that include a large inventory of business components can be 5 to10 times more productive and responsive than those that don't (0.8 probability)."

"Multichannel management, encompassing not only information integration across channels but also workflow management (e.g., loan application processing via the Internet and via the branch), is leading to an overhaul of branch systems. The end game of channel integration will be providing uniform service and customer data, and tracking channel usage, which will allow banks to better gauge customer profitability."

"To be effective, these product-oriented technologies must align with an holistic enterprise systems architecture that ensures a consistent customer experience and streamlines regulatory compliance."

"Customer knowledge that is made available to all customer-facing employees regardless of channel/location/product specialty has long been an elusive Holy Grail of retail banking. No longer. Pioneering banks are coming very close to capturing the Grail and providing real-time and sales-focused customer information which enables customer service representatives to deliver personalized service."