Source: www.bizjournals.com

SunTrust Banks signed a 10-year agreement with Toronto-based Symcor to outsource “a significant portion” of the bank’s back-office banking operations.

As part of the deal, about 1,500 SunTrust employees will be moved out of the bank and 54 positions could be eliminated, a company spokesman said.

In addition, Symcor will handle SunTrust’s check clearing, lockbox processing and statement production functions.

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed in the statement, nor did the bank disclose possible cost savings as a result of the deal.

The back-office duties will be transferred Aug. 1, affecting SunTrust employees in Orlando; Miami; Baltimore; Atlanta; Nashville and Memphis, Tenn.; Richmond, Va.; and Durham, N.C..

Symcor will buy or lease the SunTrust facilities in those locations, which adds to the Canadian company’s existing operations in Orlando, Chicago, Atlanta, Charlotte and Los Angeles.

Symcor now provides similar back-office services to five of the 15 largest North American banks.

For SunTrust, the latest move is part of the bank’s companywide cost-cutting initiative announced last spring, dubbed Efficiency in Execution (E Squared), company spokesman Mike McCoy said.

Last year, the bank sold branches and office space across its Southeast footprint in a sale/leaseback agreement and cut staffing.”This is consistent with the rest of our E Squared program,” McCoy said.

SunTrust is the fourth-largest financial institution in South Florida, with a 5.63 percent market share, $6.2 billion in local deposits and $8.43 billion in deposits.

Source: www.sda-india.com

Conseco, an insurance provider focused on offering financial security for the life, health and retirement needs of middle-market and senior Americans, announced that it has selected Infosys for a five-year contract to provide development and maintenance services to its key business applications.

“We view Infosys as a strong partner for complex work, and we entered into the outsourcing relationship knowing we would like their advice and implementation assistance with other applications initiatives,” said Russ Bostick, Conseco’s executive vice president and Chief Information Officer.

He further added saying that, the company has already benefited by emulating Infosys practices in improving their Conseco India Data Services subsidiary, which provides similar services for other mission-critical Conseco systems.

Under the terms of the deal, Infosys will support several IT systems that power Conseco’s business – including new business, policy administration, claims, audit management, marketing, and agent compensation. By centralizing the support, maintenance and development of these applications with Infosys, Conseco will be able to better navigate business cycles and scale its applications and IT capabilities to meet business demands, claimed Conseco.

Eric Paternoster, senior vice president, Insurance, Healthcare and Life Sciences, Infosys Technologies, said the partnership will support Conseco’s business growth and operational excellence goals.