Cy-Co FCU's two employees–CEO Joyce Taylor and Keva Scarborough–evacuated to Lafayette and Houston, respectively, as the storm approached. That was after they managed to retrieve a hard copy of the member trial balance, backup of the computer drives and their disaster kit before leaving town.
"Optimistically, we expected to be back in two days but it was 10 days before the National Guard allowed us to return," Taylor says. "When we did, we had no Internet access or telephone lines. To improvise, we bought a broadband card for our laptop to process electronic transactions."
They did that with the help of FIS, which worked with the NCUA to get more than a dozen client CUs up and running after the storm, locating CU personnel, arranging for receipt of backup tapes and shipping laptops for emergency use.
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FIS provides core processing to hundreds of small credit unions, a responsibility it inherited with the acquisition of Aurum Technology, a firm which itself had recently acquired Computer Consultants Corp. (CCC), the original developer of the Mercury system for small credit unions.
Cy-Co FCU (www.cycofcu.org) has about 860 members and a single SEG: Cytec Industries employees and contractors at the company's Fortier chemical plant in Westwego, not far from New Orleans in Jefferson Parish. Katrina hit the area hard and Taylor and Scarborough, working with FIS, were happy they were able to set up temporary processing at the company's center in Charlotte, N.C., until they could again set up shop back home, Taylor says. "After all, many of our members have entrusted us with their life savings and we were determined we would not fail them," she says. While service was restored as quickly as possible, Taylor says, she wants to avoid a repeat and committed to the ASP version of the in-house core system she already knew. "This is peace of mind," she says. "Disaster recovery and business continuity are built into Mercury On-Demand. No matter what happens–hurricane, terrorism, a disaster of any kind–our members can access their funds, apply for needed loans and use our home banking from anywhere."
The ASP core solution runs remotely in real time on secured FIS servers and is easily scalable for growing credit unions simply by adding more workstations or Windows terminals, says Santo Cannone, the former Aurum Technology executive who's now senior vice president of the Integrated Financial Solutions division of Arkansas-based FIS.
"People like Joyce Taylor exemplify what the credit union business is all about," Cannone says. "Credit union leaders almost by definition are ready and willing to place themselves in harm's way to take care of their members. We at FIS are motivated to continually develop options to support their devotion." — [email protected]
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