Today's financial services environment is fast and furious - rapidly changing business environments, mergers and acquisitions, and competition for customers put significant pressure on an institution's technology delivery system. Regardless of the situation, at some point, every financial institution finds itself dealing with that dreaded scenario - a core system conversion!
Converting to a new core system is a massive undertaking affecting every area of a financial institution. A bad conversion can quite literally "break the bank" and pose serious operational, management and perception risks to the organization.
Enter Cornerstone Advisors. With Cornerstone acting in the role of mentor, advisor and best practice provider, you are ensured that all aspects of the conversion are more than adequately covered.
The Benefits to You
Cornerstone's proven project management methodology and effective oversight by highly experienced career managers with decades of conversion experience ensures you of:
- Time and cost savings
- A well-timed, smoothly run conversion
- Mitigated risk through meticulous, professional oversight
- The necessary post-conversion intellectual capital and skills retained in-house
The Cornerstone Conversion Management Process
Cornerstone's best practice conversion management methodology incorporates these important steps to ensure you of a successful conversion:
- Design and development of a detailed conversion project plan
- Regular in-depth review of project status
- Participation in test plan development
- Ongoing oversight of the conversion project
- Post-conversion assistance
- Post implementation process improvement
If you're looking for more "hands on" project management expertise, Cornerstone can act as an on-site Conversion Project Manager, helping you select the right Conversion Management Team, develop a detailed conversion plan, and provide overall project management and risk mitigation activities.
The Cornerstone Differentiation
- Highly Experienced Project Team. Our breadth of experience includes successful conversions for highly complex, multi-billion dollar organizations as well as smaller institutions.
- Comprehensive Business and Systems Approach. Cornerstone's "full service" approach incorporate elements of strategic planning, technology assessment, benchmarking and process improvement. This means you get the benefits of our operational, marketing, communication, HR, risk management and governance experience to eliminate the risks associated with a conversion.
- Vendor Knowledge - Cornerstone has an established reputation as the leading expert on the vendor market, and our deep knowledge of technology and vendors helps escalate project issues to the right level and get them resolved quickly.
- Integrated Systems Conversion Tool Kit - Our proven methodology effectively integrates all conversion activities leveraging team activity with common reporting and project plans. Our proprietary tools and methods are vendor independent, simple to use, yet powerful in their ability to mitigate risk and address the complex requirements of a system conversion.
We've Done this Before
Here are just a few examples of work we've performed in this area:
- West Coast Bank Acquisition ($8 billion) - Comprehensive conversion and merger integration services in the acquisition of a mid-size California bank by a large international financial institution.
- California Regional Bank ($13 billion) - Comprehensive conversion and merger integration services for the acquisition of a $600 million community bank by a $12 billion West Coast bank.
- Farm Credit Bank ($13 billon) - Comprehensive system selection, contract negotiation and conversion services for core loan accounting system for a Farm Credit Administration institution.
- Northwest Credit Union ($800 million) - Comprehensive system selection, contract negotiation and conversion services.
- Southeast Credit Union Merger ($3.2 billion) - Conversion and merger integration services for the merger of two large southeastern credit unions.
- Small Northeast Credit Union ($120 million) - Comprehensive system selection, contract negotiation and conversion services for a service bureau to service bureau conversion.
- Small Southwest Bank ($250 million) - Comprehensive system selection, contract negotiation and conversion services for small Texas bank.
- East Coast Bank Merger ($1.6 billion) - Conversion and merger integration services for a $1.6 billion East Coast bank resulting from the merger of two smaller institutions.
- Wisconsin Credit Union ($1 billion) - System selection and conversion services for a large community credit union.
- Canadian Credit Union ($ billion) - System selection and conversion services for a large, community credit union headquartered in Saskatchewan.