Driven by an experienced staff armed with local decision-making power, the bank's highly personalized customer service strategy has enabled it to grow substantially since opening in 1997.

The announcement extends Macatawa's 11-year partnership with Fiserv and continues its use of Premier, the most widely used core banking platform in the nation. The bank was previously processed by an independent data center that licensed Premier from Fiserv. "We're convinced the benefits of buying directly from Fiserv will deliver a more reliable system as well as the expertise we need to serve our changing market," said Renae Eckland, chief information officer, Macatawa Bank. "Nobody delivers Premier better than Fiserv."

Macatawa Bank chose outsourced processing on the Premier platform from Fiserv, as well as value-added solutions that will enhance customer service and streamline the bank's operations. They include AML Manager, Activity Manager(SM), Business Analytics, Customer View(TM) and HSA for Premier, as well as the Prologue(TM) solutions for financial accounting. This multiproduct solution set reinforces the Fiserv core competencies in Processing Services, Insights and Optimization and Risk and Compliance.

Premier's service-oriented architecture and seamless integration make it possible for Macatawa Bank to rapidly deploy new solutions to meet market, regulatory and operational challenges. By maximizing flexibility and integration, the service oriented architecture provides a framework to share data, services and capabilities, while enabling the bank to deploy Fiserv solutions one step at a time.

Since the bank's third quarter 2009 conversion, Macatawa has greatly reduced the number of third-party vendors it uses, relying instead on fully integrated solutions offered by Fiserv.

"We continue to be impressed with the capabilities of the Premier bank platform," said Eckland. "Macatawa's growth in the last decade necessitated a change to a larger provider with greater capabilities. In our decision-making process, we considered not only what Premier offers, but also what Fiserv brings to the table to help us succeed. Fiserv is clearly the right choice for Macatawa."

"The highly scalable Premier bank platform is a good fit for Macatawa. Its flexibility and service-oriented architecture mean that the bank can more easily integrate processes, data and systems," said Mike Young, president, Bank and Credit Union Solutions at Fiserv. "Macatawa is such a great success story. Having run on Premier all these years, we've always considered ourselves one of their partners, but Macatawa's decision to expand their Fiserv relationship will create so many new opportunities for both of our organizations. This is definitely a win for everyone."