The region's financial institutions will now have access to a comprehensive suite of front-office applications that operate on a single, J2EE-based platform to help reduce costs, increase revenue opportunities and improve customer relationships.

Under the terms of the agreement, EverSystems will migrate some of its current turn-key e-banking offerings to related S1 Enterprise solutions, including S1 Personal Banking, S1 Business Banking, S1 Corporate Banking, S1 Insurance, S1 Enterprise Teller, S1 Enterprise Sales and Service Platform, and S1 Enterprise Call Center, all of which are offered on the S1 Enterprise Platform.

According to Marco Garib, president and CEO of EverSystems, "A key component of our growth strategy is to build long-term, mutually beneficial partnerships with global players to expand our product portfolio, reach new markets, and better serve our customers with end-to-end financial solutions. This agreement enables us to leverage S1's depth of software development experience in the financial services industry and the company's $100 million investment in designing, developing and deploying integrated, front-office applications with best-in-class functionality."

According Maria Luisa Kun, Research Director at Gartner, "The Latin America financial services market has been one of the most active for consumer Internet banking. Now the market is ripe for transforming digitally enabled financial relationships with the business sector. In fact, Gartner predicts that, by 2008, 30 percent of small to mid-sized enterprises in Latin America will use online banking and that multichannel integration will be a competitive necessity for domestic Latin American banks by 2006."

According to Jaime Ellertson, CEO of S1 Corporation, "We are excited to join forces with EverSystems, historically a competitor in Latin America. As we continue to strategically enhance our global distribution network, this agreement will enable S1 to more than triple its presence in Latin America by leveraging EverSystems' extensive sales force, experienced implementation teams, and prestigious brand name. While the global financial services industry begins to demand integrated, multi-channel ready solutions, our investment in S1 Enterprise solutions will continue to open new distribution channels and opportunities for S1 and its partners around the world."

The two organizations will serve approximately 50 of Latin America's leading financial institutions, including Bank of America, Citibank, BankBoston, Unibanco, Santander, ABN AMRO, Banamex, Grupo AVAL and Scotiabank Inverlat. Joint customers of the two organizations will now benefit from feature-rich applications that operate on an open, scalable platform, all delivered and supported by local resources with extensive domain expertise at a lower cost. EverSystems' deep expertise in local e-finance systems, payment networks, regulatory issues, bill pay requirements, varying languages, and other regional specifications will enhance the experience that financial institutions will have implementing and operating S1 Enterprise solutions. The availability of S1's internationally ready applications will also enable Latin America-based financial institutions to compete more effectively with the large, global financial enterprises that have entered the region.

The organizations anticipate being able to localize and deliver the solutions, which will be branded by EverSystems but include "Powered by S1" to customers later this year. They will also be working closely with customers to present the benefits of a migration plan from their current operations to the S1 solutions, localized and customized by EverSystems.