Boston, MA, USA May 30, 2003

?

After years of neglect and thousands of dead trees, financial institutions are finally paying more attention to automating the traditionally paper-intensive, manually-driven new account opening process.

The report looks at the traditional way of opening new accounts and examines how technology, driven by an intuitive rules-based workflow process, can assist in reducing potential errors, as well as increase the success rates for new account openings. The report also profiles a select group of technology providers that have implemented solutions in this marketplace: AFS, CashEdge, MphasiS, Sapient, and Symphoni.

"The largely manual new account opening process can be viewed as the final frontier in terms of automating the front-office activities within retail financial services operations," says Celent analyst, Sang Lee, the lead author of the report. Lee adds, "While complete automation of new account opening process is not realistic in the short-term, automating even a small part of the overall process will go a long way in reducing risk, successfully opening new accounts, and increasing cross-sell and up-sell opportunities."

A is available online.

of Celent Communications' Retail Securities & Investments and Retail Banking research services can download the report electronically by clicking on the icon to the left. Non-members should contact info@celent.com for more information.