San Antonio, Texas, is not a small town. Far from it. Boasting nearly a million and a half residents, it is the seventh largest city in the United States and second only to Houston in the great state of Texas (sorry, Dallas). San Antonio is the home of the Alamo, many excellent schools like Trinity University, the five-time NBA champion San Antonio Spurs, a number of military facilities (including Fort Sam Houston and Lackland Air Force Base, among others), the iconic Riverwalk, excellent Tex-Mex food, and some of the best medical centers in the world.
San Antonio is our Home Town
Coviant Software: Specialist MFT Software Company (est. 2004)
And, of course, San Antonio is also the location of the worldwide headquarters of the best Managed File Transfer software company on the planet.
There’s no doubt that San Antonio is vibrant and diverse. Yet, despite being a large metropolis, a lot of San Antonio has a distinct “small town” feel, owing to the many neighborhoods spread out over the city’s large geographical footprint. And so, as we begin our walk down Main Street, USA, we thought we’d walk through one of those neighborhoods and visit a business closely associated with the city.
If you’re headed north on Broadway toward Alamo Heights and turn right onto Austin Highway at the old Mobil gas station (now home to a stone products company, but still boasting the distinctive red Pegasus weather vane perched atop its roof), you won’t get far before you come to a Frost Bank branch, a fine financial institution that is synonymous with San Antonio.
The Neighborhood Bank
Even at a time when colossal banking brands dominate the financial services landscape, smaller and mid-sized banks and credit unions still thrive. People feel comfortable doing business with the neighborhood bank, and, like Frost Bank, they feel good about being a part of an organization that is active in the local economy. Frost Bank is an active partner in the growth and vitality of San Antonio, including building projects, business services, and charitable endeavors throughout the city and west Texas.
One thing that is important for any financial institution, and especially for those that are regional, is to have the trust of its customers and community. Keeping personal and financial data secure is a big part of the process for earning and maintaining trust, as is the execution of reliable transactions.
Moving Money, Moving Data
Banks and credit unions are hubs of financial data transfers. Deposits and withdrawals, cash transfers, and the management of credit and debit card transactions are but some of the more visible transactions that customers see. But there are many highly sensitive informational transactions that are integral to a bank’s operation. Data associated with the positive pay system that is used to prevent fraud, paperwork that has to be filed with state and federal bank regulators, and other data that has to be sent and received from partners, vendors, and other entities that make up a complex digital supply chain.
A recent McKinsey report on open data in the financial services industry suggests that the flow of financial data within and between organizations will increase dramatically as innovations competition relies heavily on the secure, frictionless movement of information and as banking and financial products become more mobile.
“An open-data ecosystem can function effectively only by achieving a level of well-founded trust among all the participants. Without this, market participants—whether individual consumers or businesses—may opt out. Financial data are particularly sensitive, and users are more likely to want to share data if they know what they are sharing and why that sharing is valuable to them,” the report states. “User trust is also encouraged when threats to cybersecurity are anticipated and mitigated. Breaches can occur during transfer of data, or at any institution involved in the open data ecosystem, such as a bank or fintech.”
Trust is a Valuable Asset
Every transfer of information that happens behind the scenes must be secure, on time, and reliable. Any breakdown in the process can erode trust. And if there happens to be a data breach, the problems and costs multiply. The average cost of a data breach in the financial services industry is $5.72 million, according to the most recent Ponemon Institute report, and the largest portion of that cost, 38%, is associated with the lost business costs following a breach. After all, it is hard to attract and retain customers if you have a reputation for unreliability and poor security.
Whether the bank on your town’s Main Street is regional brand like Frost Bank, a smaller local institution, or one of the big national brands, there’s a lot of stuff happening behind the scenes. And a lot of that stuff involves moving data to and from places. Coviant Software works with many banks, credit unions, and financial institutions of all sizes to ensure the safe, reliable transfer of that data.
