People's selected AFS to support demand for more complex Commercial Real Estate product offerings and to leverage its existing technology infrastructure, building upon its use of the AFS Commercial Loan Accounting System, Level III(TM). The implementation will improve efficiency and reduce costs by consolidating portfolios on a single system, while enhancing the bank's ability to support the specialized requirements of construction lending, structured finance, and commercial mortgages.

"People's successful conversion of its commercial real estate portfolio to the AFS platform reinforces the bank's commitment to its commercial clients," said Lisa Hurwitz, vice president of Commercial Operations at People's Bank. "We now have an enhanced ability to support a more specialized and diversified set of financial services with greater efficiency, leveraging some of the most advanced lending technology in the industry."

The AFS Commercial Real Estate system addresses the growing complexity of this type of credit facility - characterized by multifaceted deal structures, conditional financing arrangements, highly flexible mortgage accrual and payment terms, and burgeoning escrow requirements. Regulators have placed further demands on financial institutions for increased process control, disclosure, and reporting in commercial real estate lending.

"The real estate boom of the past several years has increased demands on commercial real estate lending systems to cope with new business and regulatory requirements and to replace manual processes and tracking procedures, forcing the issue of systems automation," said John Shain, president of AFS. "As a modular component of the fully integrated AFSVision(TM) lending platform, the AFS Commercial Real Estate functionality combines the advantages of specialized lending capability with single-platform delivery."