Texas United Bancshares, a $1.7 billion holding company (on a pro forma basis as of 2/15/06, which includes the recent acquisition of The Express Bank of Texas and the pending acquisition of Northwest Bancshares, Inc.), operates through three wholly-owned subsidiary banks in Texas including State Bank of La Grange, GNB Financial of Gainesville and Gateway National Bank of Dallas.

The holding company has grown dramatically over the past decade through merger, acquisition and branch expansion, with future plans calling for even greater growth. The organization was rapidly outgrowing its technology systems; and because of the acquisitions, different systems were in place at the different banks.

"It was clearly time to look for new alternatives," said L. Don Stricklin, the holding company's president. "As long as change was inevitable, we searched for one technology partner that could offer us a broad range of integrated solutions. We found that FIS' HORIZON core processing solution incorporates virtually every process needed to operate our banks, and it's fully integrated with ImageCentre, a browser-based solution we chose for check processing, document and remittance imaging, and electronic archival. Still, HORIZON's open architecture gives us the flexibility to add third-party applications if we wish."

HORIZON automatically moves debits and credits from all channels through the posting process, resolves the transaction and processes it through to the back office for final reconciliation and reporting. In addition to HORIZON and ImageCentre, Texas United Bancshares also opted for Executive Access for General Ledger(TM), a business intelligence tool that allows bankers to view the organization from the top down and analyze performance in multiple ways; TellerPro(TM), a front-end solution that provides easy access to all customer, account and transaction information within HORIZON; integrated Deposit Origination(TM), the new account platform that incorporates fully compliant forms from Banker Systems; ACquire(TM) enterprise report management that turns data in system-generated reports into usable information that can be dispersed throughout the enterprise; ALLView(TM) document imaging, which allows users to view account- and customer-specific documents at the workstation; FIS' online banking solution, a comprehensive and fully integrated electronic banking solution that allows retail and commercial customers to select the features that fit their unique needs; EFT services that offer ATM and debit card access to regional, national and international ATM and point-of-sale networks; and FIS' integrated card management services that will help the banks manage their growing card portfolios.

"For years, bankers have been telling us that they want to deal with one provider for all their financial technology solutions," said Jim Susoreny, executive vice president for FIS' Integrated Financial Solutions division. "Based on this input, our product development and acquisition strategies have never wavered. We are committed to providing total financial solutions that translate into efficiencies and cost savings for our clients and superior service for the customers they serve."