Jack Henry & Associates, Inc.® (NASDAQ:JKHY) is a leading provider of technology solutions and payment processing services primarily for the financial services industry. Its Symitar® division today announced that Ascend Federal Credit Union will convert to the Episys® platform to create a stronger member experience and have greater flexibility to drive innovation through the core.
The $2.5 billion-asset Ascend sought out a core partner that would support its goal to provide members the same type of service and convenience they know from online retail providers. This meant having a tremendous depth of functionality within the proprietary system itself as well as integrating seamlessly with third parties, and the credit union cites Symitar as having both.
Matt Jernigan, executive vice president of Tennessee-based Ascend, said, “We want to empower our members to engage and transact with us in a variety of ways that align with their expectations for what banking can be. Symitar not only understands what this means to our organization, but truly enables this type of delivery. Episys is the perfect balance of a platform that enables a great employee user experience while also connecting easily into the channels that members interact with directly, including online banking, payments and our ITM environment.”
Ascend will run Episys in the Jack Henry cloud environment, relying on Symitar to deliver its core in a safe and secure way while still benefitting from the same configurability and flexibility all Episys credit unions enjoy. The credit union currently operates its core system in-house and looks forward to the system uptime and added security afforded by the hosted model.
Mark Blazek, senior vice president and chief information officer at Ascend, said, “Our members are not concerned with the root causes of downtime; however, they are keenly aware of the fact that they cannot access their accounts or conduct financial transactions. This situation disrupts the positive reputation that Ascend has developed with its members. Symitar has demonstrated the capabilities to support our availability requirements and boasts a sophisticated continuity and disaster recovery infrastructure that will help ensure Ascend’s reputation remains strong.”
Ted Bilke, vice president of Jack Henry & Associates and president of Symitar, commented, “We want our credit unions to understand that our partnership is deeper than technology. When we can work alongside them to understand their goals to be better – to be more – for their members, that’s when really special things happen. We’re excited to welcome credit unions like Ascend to the Episys community, helping us push the platform’s potential and innovate for the modern member.”