Chase Manhattan Bank

Contact:
Chase Manhattan Bank
1 Chase Manhattan Plaza
New York, NY 10005
U.S.A.
http://www.chase.com

Tools Used:
IONA's Orbix™, CORBA Edify Corp.'s Electronic Banking System Release 3™, WindowsNT™, CORBA®

Description:
In October of 1998, Chase Manhattan Bank demonstrated a number of Web-based online banking services for consumers, corporations and institutional investors. Many of the services are slated for rollout by the end of 1998, and others will be added throughout 1999, Chase officials said. And while acknowledging it has lagged other major banks in rolling out Internet banking, Chase said the wait should prove worth it.

"There have been other banks out there before us," said Michael Mazza, manager of groupware and Internet services at Chase. "A lot of the delay has not been due to a lack of corporate awareness; we've been trying to develop a cohesive continuum. We have been preparing for a rapid fire to the consumer side, the institutional side, corporate banking and private banking."

While looking to offer that cohesive strategy across multiple business and consumer units, Chase has decentralized the way the services are offered and the technology platforms are used. As a result, that has allowed some units to tie together different systems using Java and Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) technologies..

For example, Chase Workspace, the bank's wholesale banking service, decided to go with CORBA and Java-based middleware. "We built the infrastructure so it can integrate with third-party applications," said Suzanne Greenbaum, a vice president at Chase Workspace.

The consumer-based home banking service will be rolled out by year's end, said Ursula Wright, an assistant vice president at Chase. The bank is using Edify Corp.'s Windows NT-based Web banking software, Electronic Banking System Release 3, released in Q4 of 1998.

Chase also is planning to roll out a Java-based mortgage application service, allowing customers to apply for home financing via the Web. The site already can determine payments based on rates and the amount financed, and the new offering will let customers apply online, said Greg Savage, operations manager for alternate delivery channels at Chase Mortgage. The system will run on a NetDynamics Inc. Web application server connected to an Oracle database.

Also in the works and demonstrated by Chase are:

• Bill Presentment, in partnership with bill presentment specialists such as CheckFree Corp., TransPoint and other banks, to give corporate customers numerous methods for distributing their bills to customers over the Internet.

• Chase Workspace, a browser-based application for business customers launched last month. It lets institutional investors access account information. Under development are tools, including one that allows customers to gain customized views of data and market feeds.

• Intelisys Electronic Commerce, which lets organizations consolidate their procurement within a corporate intranet.

When compared with banking giants Bank of America, Citibank and Wells Fargo, Chase may be late. But only 27 percent of the nation's largest 100 banks offer Web-based transactions, according to consultancy Ernst & Young. That percentage is considerably lower after factoring in all banks nationwide, said Jonathan Lack, executive vice president at CompuBank, which earlier this month debuted its nationwide Internet-only bank. Lack said he is not deterred by the bigger banks' Web offerings. "There are 10,000 banks out there, and 9,000 won't have Web banking anytime soon," Lack said. "There's plenty of low hanging fruit out there."