TD Securities is looking to Dell Technologies to enhance its data storage and processing capabilities, the investment banking arm of TD Bank announced Monday.

Dell will provide TD Securities services to manage duplicate data, add cyber resiliency and reduce the bank’s annual downtime by more than 10 times to 32 seconds per year, according to the TD Securities release.

Dell’s PowerMax, an enterprise data storage facility service, will provide TD Securities with “over [two times] improvement in bandwidth performance versus the infrastructure we had on the floor,” Feisal Anooar, director & global head of Data Storage, Wholesale Banking, TD Securities told Bank Automation News. 

PowerMax’s services will also help TD Securities optimize “storage capacity utilization where data structures are identical,” Anooar added. 

While the block storage discussions began in 2019, the companies have a longstanding relationship, Anooar said. The Toronto-based bank is also looking to enhance its personal finance management tools and leverage AI-driven predictive analytics to help consumers control spending in real-time. 

Texas Bankers Association digitizes with True Digital  

Texas Bankers Association (TBA) is working with True Digital, a digital banking marketplace, to fill technology voids within community banks.  

True Digital will allow TBA members to understand the technology stacks of its members and “have an in-depth view of their peer banks’ vendors, which will facilitate bank collaboration and provide added benefits to the True Digital platform’s vendor discovery and optimization tools,” Patrick Sells, co-founder and chief executive of True Digital, told BAN. 

TBA members understand the importance of innovating digital capabilities but lack the resources needed to effectively assess and implement new products, Sells said. 

“An essential part of the vendor evaluation process is being able to identify and connect with other banks that may have similar tech stacks and have already partnered with vendors under consideration,” Sells said. “These connections allow FIs to learn how well the technology works with various core or operating systems and better understand a vendor’s capabilities before initiating partnerships.” 

The 380 bank members of TBA, including the $4 billion First National Bank Texas, will be able to use True Digital’s platform to better understand banks within TBA “that have similar technology and how they can work together to make the best possible vendor selections,” Chris Furlow, president and chief executive of TBA, told BAN. 

Nearly 78% of TBA members and other banks surveyed by True Digital in the past few weeks indicated that finding the right vendors is very important to their bank’s strategic plan, Furlow said. The True Digital platform is a low-cost tool accessible to banks of all sizes, as “they operate on a subscription-based model, with varying tiers dependent on a bank’s asset size (from $2,500 up to $10,000),” he added. 

“Almost 100% of our banks will be looking to add or change a vendor at some point in the next year or two,” Furlow said. “Optimizing current vendor relationships, or discovering and implementing new ones, is crucial to the success and growth of our community banks.” 

Marqeta teams with Fitbank, expands to Brazil, targets LatAm

Marqeta, the payments card services provider is teaming up with Brazilian banking-as-a-service provider Fitbank to penetrate the Brazilian fintech landscape on Tuesday. 

The Oakland, Calif.-based company operates in 40 countries, including Cuba, Congo, Afghanistan and Laos, and will serve the largest fintech market in Latin America by operating in Brazil, according to Marqeta’s release. 

Marqeta will provide Fitbank a tech platform for card issuance and card payment processing and provide fraud management, a Marqeta spokesperson told BAN, noting, the company can power a range of use cases, but will be strategic about how it starts to launch new card programs. 

“We will work with our customers who are looking to expand into Brazil, while also working alongside Fitbank to support local fintechs,” the spokesperson said. “We’re currently targeting other countries in Central and South America.”

The company reported losses of $184.8 million in 2022, $163.9 million in 2021 and $47.7 million in 2020, according to Marqeta’s annual filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission this year. 

Extraco Bank taps Teslar to modernize commercial lending 

Texas-based Extraco Bank is teaming up with Teslar Software to streamline and digitize its commercial lending platform on Tuesday. 

The $2 billion bank is seeking greater automation and digital tools for commercial lending operations. Extraco aims to modernize commercial lending to help Texas businesses and provide a faster customer experience, according to a Teslar Software release. 

“With Teslar’s automated workflows and robust toolkit, we’ll be able to fulfill loans with speed and convenience while empowering lenders with deeper insights into portfolio activity and health,” Brian Reinhardt, president, Central Texas South Region, at Extraco Banks, said in the release. 

Teslar Software is an Arkansas-based software-as-a-service provider that helps banks digitize their platforms. The company has provided SaaS to Bank of Idaho, Bank of Grand Lake and Great Plains Bank. 

Visit Bank Automation News’ Transactions Database which lists the technology selected or acquired by companies in the financial services industry, with a specific focus on technology that enhances automation.