Following its acquisition of CheckFree at the end of 2007, Fiserv has finally decided to rebrand the business under its own moniker. The vendor claims this rebranding exercise and global advertising campaign represents its new consolidated approach to the financial technology market.
The management team and organisational structure have also been streamlined (and we all know what that means) down to two primary operating divisions led by Steve Olsen, former CheckFree chief operating officer and now Fiserv co-group president, and Tom Warsop, the other co-group president. The vendor hopes that this structure will allow it to integrate the client relationship management and product development efforts across its business lines, with the associated cost benefits included.
The move to rebrand and hopefully focus more effort into marketing its capital markets solutions cannot come soon enough, given the slow year that CheckFree has experienced on the reference data solution front. Customer wins for its corporate actions solution eVent have been lacking over the last 12 months at the very least.
Pete Kight, Fiserv vice chairman and founder of CheckFree, remains positive about the future and promises a focus on “data analytics” from the vendor’s now integrated portfolio of payments, processing services, risk and compliance, customer and channel management, and business intelligence and optimisation offerings. What impact this new approach will have on individual product lines, however, is yet to be established.
