Bank Closings Open Doors For Informatica

A total of 53 banks across the country have been shut down this year by regulators, but the customer accounts have of course survived. So accounts belonging to the Bank of Wyoming of Thermopolis, Wyo., closed by Wyoming banking regulators last Friday, are now the happy depositors of the Central Bank & Trust of Lander, Wyo.

The new depositors are something of a windfall for Central Bank & Trust, but the new accounts are also something of a headache, as the bank has to integrate reams of data with its own databases and begin a new round of risk assessments. This in turn also represents an opportunity for Informatica, which specializes in data integration and data quality software, to diversify its customer base from the large financial institutions that make up a great deal of its market. Craig Clearwater, vice president of the financial services division of Informatica, told me in his office last week that these events "create new down-market opportunities for us. We're getting into the regional banks, the super-regional banks, as well as hedge funds and large commerical banks."

Informatica generates most of its business when companies have to unify databases because of a merger or acquisition -- "that is a sweet spot for what we do," Clearwater told me -- but most of those corporate moves are mutually-agreed-upon transactions, not state-mandated marriages.