Fiserv Going from Many Brands to One—Except in Insurance

Fiserv Inc., which has accumulated an array of brands over 25 years of acquisitions, is expected to announce a new branding strategy today that puts the corporate identity front and center.

Besides rolling out a new branding strategy, Fiserv is also reorganizing again. The company combined its 77 business units into five in 2006, and now has condensed four units into two, according to Jeffery Yabuki, Fiserv's president and chief executive. The fifth, its insurance division, announced in July 2008 that Trident IV, a private equity fund managed by Stone Point Capital LLC, acquired a 51% interest in the insurance businesses of Fiserv Inc.

As of March 2, Fiserv Insurance Solutions will be known as StoneRiver. Future steps to launch the new brand will include a new logo and corporate Web site, which will be rolled out progressively throughout the year.

Counting more than 3,000 clients, the future StoneRiver’s solutions include insurance policy and claims administration, underwriting, rating, advanced billing and collections, point-of-sale technology and service solutions.

As for the rest of Fiserv, Yabuki says it is important to go to the market with a single face.

This does not mean that signs on all the buildings in all the towns where the banking technology vendor's units operate will change immediately, but the company is replacing its boxy blue corporate logo with a streamlined one in bright orange.

Despite the troubles facing the financial industry, Yabuki says the time is right to go to market with the "one Fiserv" approach.

The financial crisis will lead to a new emphasis on risk management, he predicts, and regulators or lawmakers are likely to impose new requirements for compliance.

The rebranding is the next logical step in the "Fiserv 2.0" initiative that began in September 2006, less than a year after Yabuki succeeded longtime CEO Les Muma, who retired.

Fiserv, the No. 1 company in American Banker's FinTech 100 ranking in November plans to announce the rebranding at the Bank Administration Institute's TransPay conference, which starts today in San Diego. It is promoting the move with advertisements in the trade media and general-interest newspapers in markets such as Milwaukee, near its Brookfield, Wis., headquarters; Lincoln, Neb., where its Information Technology Inc. has more than 1,000 employees; Atlanta, where its CheckFree Corp. operation has 1,500 employees; and Portland, Ore., where Corillian Corp. was founded.