FSTC Merges Into Financial Services Roundtable

The Financial Services Technology Consortium (FSTC) and the Financial Services Roundtable have announced they will merge. Under the agreement, the FSTC becomes a division of The Roundtable. According to the organizations, the merger creates a Roundtable Technology Group that will allow the best practices and technology policy developed by The Roundtable's BITS division to be translated into technical solutions by the FSTC division, providing full stewardship to member companies.

Historically, BITS and FSTC have collaborated while maintaining separate but similar memberships. By combining the organizations, it is hoped the merger will eliminate redundancies and streamline resources within the financial services industry, as well as formalize the pipeline of BITS-developed business requirements into FSTC's technical development projects.

The Financial Services Roundtable represents 100 of the largest financial services companies. Member companies participate through the CEO and other senior executives nominated by the CEO. BITS is the technology policy division of the Roundtable. It uses its intellectual capital to address emerging issues around financial services, operations and technology. BITS focuses on strategic issues where industry cooperation serves the public good.

FSTC sponsors noncompetitive collaborative research and development of interbank technical projects affecting the entire financial services industry. Its mission is to help members collaborate on technical and business aspects of technologies so that they may rapidly bring innovations in service and quality closer to the marketplace while competing upon sound, shared technology fundamentals.

"Having BITS and FSTC under one umbrella will dramatically provide better resources for less overhead," said Steve Bartlett, President and CEO for the Roundtable, in a statement. "We are pleased that FSTC's relationship with the vendor community will bring another unique element to the Roundtable."