CURRENT BANKING ENVIRONMENT
Increasing regulation, thinner spreads and a questionable economic future are a given in the current community banking world. Piling on problems from vendors is something that can be avoidable.
VENDOR PROMISES
Dealing with vendors seems to always be challenging. Clients reported that most vendors have three to five year contracts and support costs have a significant escalation annually. When I was working for a community bank One of my functions in the bank was to deal with all of our vendors. They would make any promise to get a deal. Once the product was installed capabilities mentioned in the product presentation didn’t exist. They didn’t perform as promised. Some features were available as an extra cost option.
REDUCING VENDOR RISK
I now own a software company that provides a service to the banking industry. It is mainly supporting the lending function of the bank. I have seen the other side of this equation. Once the company was established we created a few rules to fully inform the bank about all aspects of our system at a consistent price.
Our main advantage is our product is installed in the bank for four months without payment. This enables the bank to get day to day functions going, receive training, and assure communication with the bank’s core is running properly. This guarantees that all features mentioned in a presentation are available and functioning as promised. This eliminates all of the risk to the bank. This is unique in the banking industry.
Our contract is a maintenance agreement that is year to year. On a recent tour of banks several were pleasantly surprised that our contract was not three to five years.
MORE BANG LESS BUCK
A community bank in Louisiana replaced another vendor with LQAS. They mentioned that LQAS performed more reporting and functionality for less that a quarter of the annual cost.
Most employees are former bankers. I was a commercial lender after being a commercial bank examiner.
If you are nearing the end of a contract period it would help to bank to look at what we offer.
WWW.LQAS.COM