An Interview with Darrell Jaggers, Vice- President, Information Systems at
Island Savings Credit Union

Darrell, what are the approximate IT costs per member for Island Savings Credit Union? Data processing costs as a percentage of our average assets are about 13 basis points. How do these costs compare to other credit unions? This is one of the lowest, if not the lowest on record for an institution our size. How does your Fincentric core banking system help you drive and maintain these cost efficiencies in your IT structure? The back-end infrastructure, Microsoft SQL Server running on Intel- based servers, is very cost effective. It is pleasing to see, as the technology progresses, how much processing capability we get for the dollar these days. The process automation software which runs alongside Fincentric Wealthview Banking helps keep down operational costs and manages operational risks. Given Fincentric Wealthview Banking operational footprint, we've been able to keep our IT department staffing levels to a very reasonable size. Nine people include Programmers, Business Analysts, Operations and Technical Services, and we support all of our IT systems. Two, often overlooked, cost areas for core banking system maintenance are new functionality and regulatory changes. The Fincentric Service Packs strategy has taken much of that burden from us. We can spend our development time doing work which is more focused on key business needs and less on technology details. We like the fact that Fincentric Wealthview Banking is an integrated solution. It contains most of the banking and member service functionality we need. This makes it much easier compared to assembling a mix of 3rd party applications attempting to work in unison. What are the advantages you see in running your core banking system in-house? How would you compare it to a service bureau solution? A key point here is that most, if not all, institutions of our size already have sizeable IT departments responsible for various in-house systems like Accounting, Email, and Intranet. Adding the operation of a core banking system is not a huge incremental step. A key strategic need for Island Savings is to be in control of our own destiny. We're not interested in the bureaucratic overhead often tied to service bureau banking solutions. We determine what is important to us and what our priorities are - not a 3rd party. We understand you are a power user of business reporting tools to support your business decisions. How do you currently use Fincentric Wealthview Banking to extract that information? We are using Fincentric Wealthview Banking shadow file functionality to aggregate information from our General Insurance, Wealth Management, Credit Card and Online Brokerage systems. This information is displayed to Fincentric Wealthview Banking users in one screen and it flows through to all of our other reporting systems. In summary, how would you describe your relationship with Fincentric? Fincentric has always been an important strategic partner for Island Savings for the last 20 years. Their openness and level of engagement is excellent. It's nice to know that you can pick up the phone at any time on any issue and have them respond. Thank you, Darrell!