First Premier Bank selects Jack Henry’s Silverlake core banking system

South Dakota-based First Premier Bank has selected Jack Henry’s Silverlake core banking system.

Implementation of the core processing system will be through JHA OutLink Processing Services (JHA OPS), Jack Henry’s outsourced offering.

Darrell Schmith, executive vice-president and CFO of First Premier Bank, says the Silverlake system will provide ‘a more holistic view of each customer from a single screen, enabling our team to better understand the entire relationship’.

According to Schmith, the bank’s preference to outsource its new core system through JHA OPS is ‘primarily because outsourcing allows the bank to focus important resources on customer needs rather than managing internal systems’.

Badlands, South Dakota / © Wikipedia

First Premier Bank is based in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and has $1.5 billion in total assets.

Bank in the Badlands?

First Premier Bank has had an interesting past.

In 2010, US news site The Daily Beast reported on its practices and how President Obama announced sweeping reforms in the US credit-card industry that would ‘hold the credit-card companies accountable’ and end ‘deceptive, unfair tactics that hit responsible consumers with unreasonable costs’.

First Premier Bank had a Mastercard offer that carried a 59.9% annual interest rate, charged $120 in first-year fees and limited a customer’s credit line to $300.

The bank’s piece of plastic was named ‘the nation’s worst credit card’ by Consumers Union, a non-profit group in the US.

In addition to this lovely accolade, Travis Plunkett of the Consumer Federation of America, said: ‘Some customers who are not terribly sophisticated are still being taken to the cleaners by the fine print.’

The bank is not alone in this activity, and First Premier executives defended themselves by arguing to The Daily Beast that ‘they are doing a service to financially troubled customers who otherwise could not obtain any sort of credit card’.

Golden year for Silverlake

High percentage rates from the bank aside, let’s end on a positive.

Jack Henry’s Silverlake has had a number of takers this year in the US.

Nashville-based FirstBank announced it was implementing Silverlake. The vendor describes this undertaking as an enterprise-wide technology overhaul.

Pacific National Bank (PNB) implemented Silverlake to prop up its digital and in-branch banking systems and Fox Chase Bank chose Silverlake as it seeks to strengthen its $1.1 billion commercial banking operations.