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Wamu Essay Research Paper The first company (стр. 1 из 3)

Wamu Essay, Research Paper

The first company, the Washington National Building and Loan Investment Association was founded in 1889 to help people rebuild after the Great Seattle Fire. Today, Washington Mutual Inc. is a regional financial services company and provides a diversified line of products. It has also become one of the nations leading residential mortgage lenders. Washington Mutual operates more than 2,000 offices and as March 31, 2000 the compan6y had assets worth $188.61 billion. The services and subsidiaries the bank provides are consumer and commercial banking services, securities brokerage, mutual fund management, property/casualty and life insurance sales, and underwriting for insurance annuities.

Washington Mutual has just been introduced to the California market about three years ago by purchasing American Savings, Great Western, and Home savings, in that order. Once Washington Mutual bought out those banks they acquired all their customers under the Washington Mutual name. Because three banks came under one name, all employees were invited to stay with Washington Mutual to help serve the huge cliental for the bank. Some of the problems they ran into with the expansion was Washington State and California have different business philosophies and California life is a faster pace which was very hard for Washington Mutual to adjust to. Also, the huge volume of customers called for greater customer service, but each branch did not have enough employees to serve all the cliental. Washington Mutual had to convert all the American Saving, Great Western, and Home Savings accounts to be compliant with their present accounts, which took longer than anticipated. Also, all employees that came over from the three banks needed to learn a new computer system and again the management did not allow enough time for training, which resulted in slow business initially.

WAMU Management

Currently Washington Mutual s Executive Committee consists of nine different positions. These positions are:

Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer

Senior Executive Vice President and General Counsel

President, Mortgage Banking and Financial Services Group

Senior Executive Vice President, Corporate Services

Vice Chair and Chief Financial Officer

President, Consumer Banking Group

Vice Chair, Corporate Development, Consumer Finance and Commercial Banking

Vice Chair, Corporate Technology

These positions were recently modified in June of 1999, when Washington Mutual decided to modify their management assignments. Since the company is growing rapidly and becoming larger, they felt that the responsibilities of the executive committee should be expanded. These executives are in charge of overseeing the strategic direction of the company.

Kerry Killinger is currently serving as the Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer. His office is based in the Washington Mutual in Seattle, Washington.

Killinger has been the president of Washington Mutual since January 1st, 1991. However, Killinger had been working for the company since 1982 when it had purchased Murphey Favre, Inc , which is the oldest securities brokerage firm in the entire Northwest. They had also acquired an affiliate of Murphey Favre, Inc. , Composite Research and Management Co. Before he had begun working for the company, he attended the University of Iowa and graduated with honors. After graduation, he went on the earn not only a bachelor s degree in business administration, but also a master s degree.

After climbing up the executive ladder for eight years, he was finally named the President of Washington Mutual. While not only serving as president of the company, Killinger is also on the board of America s Community Bankers, the Washington Financial League, the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce, the Washington Roundtable, the California Business Roundtable, the Seattle Foundation, the Partnership for Learning and the Alliance for Education.

Fay Chapman is serving as Senior Executive Vice President and General Counsel. She joined Washington Mutual in August 1997 as the Executive Vice President and General Council. It was during this time that Washington Mutual had completed their merger with Great Western Financial Co., where Chapman was the company s chief outside council. It was not only until June 1999 that she was promoted to her current position. Before working for Washington Mutual, Chapman worked for Foster Pepper & Shefelman PLLC for eighteen years after she graduated with a bachelor s degree from UCLA. Chapman is also currently a member of numerous professional organizations, including the American Bar Association and the Washington State Bar Association.

Craig S. Davis holds the title of President, Washington Mutual Home Loans and Insurance Services Group. He is responsible for overseeing production, servicing, operations, marketing, risk management, finance, and human resources for the area of Home Loans and Insurance Services. With his leadership, Washington Mutual has become one of the nation s leading residential mortgage lenders. Before he worked for the company, he started his career at American Savings Bank, as the president of ASB Financial Services. Under his guidance, ASB became California s No. 2 position in residential mortgage lending.

William W. Erich is the Executive Vice President of Corporate Relations. His responsibilities include overseeing Washington Mutual s corporate communications, government and investor relations, and leadership training areas. Erich first joined the company in 1990 as a public relations consultant, but left to work shortly for Alaska Airlines before coming back to the company in 1993 as a coordinator in the company s Mergers and Acquisitions department. Graduating from Washington State University in 1998 with a degree in communications, he is now a member on the board of directors for the Seattle Alliance for Education and the Seattle Sports and Events Councils. Erich is also a member of the Public Relations Society of America along with the Washington Savings League.

As Senior Executive Vice President of Corporate Services, Steven P. Freimuth handles the company s corporate property services, strategic sourcing, human resources, corporate services, credit risk management and community development areas. Freimuth joined Washington Mutual in 1988, when they merged with Columbia Federal Savings Bank where he had formally worked for. After graduating from the University of Puget Sound with a bachelor s degree in economics and business finance, he served as the president and director for Washington State Mortgage Leaders Association.

William A. Longbrake is the Vice Chair and Chief Financial Officer at Washington Mutual, whose duties are to oversee the company s financial accounting, tax management, corporate planning, investor relations, treasury, auditing, finance information systems and risk management areas. He first joined the company in 1982, but left in 1995 only to return again in 1996. After graduating from the College of Wooster, he later got degrees from both the University of Wisconsin and the University of Maryland. Longbrake has taught courses in business administration and finance at the University of Maryland and Seattle University. He now is on the board of trustees at the College of Wooster.

As the President of the Consumer Banking Group, Deanna Watson Oppenheimer is responsible for the consumer banking P & L. This includes the consumer banking branch network, consumer lending, customer service, operations, finance, consumer bank marketing and brand management, corporate research and development and also the group s Internet and emerging market strategies. Oppenheimer manages the company s network of over 1,000 branches and retail call centers. Under her leadership, she has not only been able to bring together the branch systems of H.F. Ahmanson, Great Western Bank, American Savings and Washington Mutual, but have also had them produce record levels of profitability and growth. Oppenheimer has been a key figure in developing the company s corporate position in the Northwest and even beyond. With her help, Washington Mutual has gained immense recognition.

Craig E. Tall is the Vice Chair of Corporate Development and Specialty Finance. His job is to oversee corporate development, this includes acquisitions and their specialty finance operations. Before Tall joined the company, he was the president of a national employee benefits consulting company called Compensation Programs Inc. Tall received his bachelor s degree in economics from the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania. He was also the founder and past president for the Seattle Academy of Arts board of trustees.

Lastly, there is Liane Wilson who is the Vice Chair of Corporate Technology. Wilson is in charge of directing the information technology, architecture services, and alternative delivery technology. Wilson has directed all the integration activities relating to the company s mergers and acquisitions twenty-three times since 1987. Wilson is on the board and executive committee for the holding company at the Star automated switch company and is also on the board at the University of Washington s business program.

In 1999, Washington Mutual modified their management roles. The company changed certain management roles because they were beginning a new phase in Washington Mutual s history following the successful merger of its third major acquisition. Washington Mutual wanted to focus on maximizing efficiency and precisely executing their business strategies within their recently combined organization with American Savings, Great Western, and Ahmanson. This plan also included consolidating many if its remaining centrally managed functions under one area. This area would be Corporate Services and it would free up more of the executive management s time so they would be able to pursue new initiatives, such as the expansion of Washington Mutual in the e-business. Washington Mutual is working on a better and more interesting way for their customers to bank online.

WAMU IS

Information systems today are very diverse and complex. The current systems Washington Mutual are using span across all architectures main frames to open systems from lap tops to ATMs. Not only do Washington Mutual s systems have to support the daily business, they also have to support their customers, management, employees, and stockholders.

The MIS systems are main framed based, and utilize IBM CMOS (type of technology used to build computers) technologies and the operating system is a MVS (main frame computer, operating system). This mainframe system consists of multiple CPU s in a shared DASD (direct access storage device) environment. Under MVS Washington Mutual, can run DB2 (an IBM application that runs on main frames). These systems allow Washington Mutual to track each customer s transaction from each entry point whether it be an ATM or a teller. The system provides Washington Mutual management with real time accuracy and allows them to post current balances within a 24-hour period. Also on this system, it is possible to track all of the loans and over night float as well as support the entire ATM networks. As you can see, the mainframe system is quite complex.

As mention earlier it is made up of IBM mainframes, IBM DASD, STK silos (a company name brand of tape drives), multiple laser printers, network controllers, and it also supports a portion of our telecommunications. Telecommunications can help IS by providing timely and accurate information to not only Washington mutual employees, but also to their customers, and investors. Telecommunication is primarily the mode of operations for all of Washington Mutual s tellers. The tellers use computers with a software program which allows the tellers to take people s transactions and give them credit for their deposits or withdrawals immediately. This program can also find customer s accounts by using their social security number which will also give the profile of the customer. This profile tells everything the customer has currently with the bank or anything that has closed at Washington Mutual. In the profile, there is also information about any loan that this customer may have taken out with Washington Mutual and the payment dates. All employees use the computers to track pay role because all time cards are done electronically. Also the telecommunication network not only supports the branches internal uses, but it also allows for over seas wire transfers. New advances in telecommunication technology has allowed customers to perform electronic banking from their PC anywhere. This brings attention to the need for high security controls. Each customer is provided with an account number or logon with an eight-digit password of his or her choice. Armed with this information, a customer can access only their information and no other account. This is accomplished through sophisticated firewall technology as well as the latest security algorithms. To further ensure the systems remain hacker free, Washington Mutual hopes to introduce another layer of entry security that they have dubbed mantrap security. Their hope is if the security were broken, Washington Mutual would then be able to track the offender easily. This system is based on the manual security systems of trying to get into a computer room where it requires you to pass through two entry barriers. First, you need to get past the first barrier: the logon and password, and then the second barrier is another unique logon and password. The beauty of this type of architecture is once you passed the first barrier; Washington Mutual has captured all of your information during the time it takes that person to log in the second time. This new system will provide customers with the security that their information will remain confidential even though Washington Mutual is expanding with technology.

E-mail is another advantage to today s technology and telecommunications network. Washington Mutual employees communicate via the web using Microsoft Outlook, which is an email package. This system runs on a Sun E4500. With this program, the company no longer has to wait for an executive to dictate a letter to his/her secretary, wait for it to be typed, reviewed and edited, and then wait to be retyped, then stuffed in an envelope and delivered to the mailroom. Once it hits the mailroom it must be weighed, stamped, and sorted by destination. Then this letter is handed over to the US mail which would take typically three days to be delivered. Now with email, a letter can be thought of, composed, and sent within an hour or less depending on the length of the email. This increases productivity of the company by not having a secretary, mailroom, mail carriers, stamps, or even the US post office. Think of the old process. Each time the document changed hands the cost of producing that document increased which meant that the marginal cost would be greater than the marginal benefit. Today with email being instanteous, none of those costs are incurred. The email comes from the originator to the receiving party instaneouly, regardless on where that person lives or works. E-mail is Internet based system which allows access into all parts of the company because the whole system is backed on their telecommunication network. This system can be accessed anywhere in the country because of dial in through a phone line. This provides the employees to communicate with anyone in the company while they are in or out of the office. More importantly the company can communicate with their employees instanteously. This technology alone has improved the communications and productivity of the company, and has reduced the operating costs significantly.

In addition to Washington Mutual, their computer also supports a portion of the human resource systems. Currently the company is converting from a mainframe-based system to open systems and then hopefully the HR system will be operational by July 2001. This system will be based on a Sun 6500 system utilizing Peoplesoft software. This will allow each employee to have on line access to his or her individual accounts and personal records. This system is a hybrid HR system as it will allow and cover for health, medical or dentinal insurance and 401K accounts. It will also provide a means for each employee to search for his or her own information requirements in real time using the intranet.

Even though the Internet has simplified and increased Washington Mutual efforts, it also comes with a dark side. The company is vulnerable to outside, unauthorized attacks by anyone who owns a PC and modem. With today s technology the bank is constantly trying to protect the company and the customers information from unauthorized personal. Because Washington Mutual has come to depend on today s technology so greatly, there can be times when this system is unreliable. For example: In a natural disasters such as earthquakes or floods if their computer system or network is down for any great period of time it would have a significant effect on the business. If they were to experience a major disaster, the bank would not be able to communicate to their customer base in a timely matter. The customers then could start to withdraw their accounts and move them to a Washington Mutual s competition. Therefore, it is extremely important for any company to have disaster recovery strategies firmly in place. For Washington Mutual, a DR (disaster recovery) strategy not only includes routine backups of all data, but also storing it in a secure location with the capabilities of becoming operational within minutes. Here in California we are prone to earthquakes. Therefore, the main data center for Washington Mutual is totally backed up in Phoenix in a parallel system which can carry the entire operations of the bank from the sight. All of their data is backed up on a daily basis. The back ups are in two forms: on disk and on tape. If for any reason the back up disk fails, Washington Mutual then could fall back to tape. The reason the company started with a disk is to speed up the recovery because tape takes substainly longer to reload the systems. Another disadvantage for Washington Mutual is if their computers are down, then it is virtually impossible for any business to get down because the company has become so dependent on today s technologies. However with this technology it allows, Washington Mutual to compete equally with other banks.