By enlisting Teradata, a
major bank found its credit-card unit was sending pre-approval notices
to individuals being foreclosed on by its mortgage department…
Here is the story (gated, Barron's) and I thank John De Palma for the pointer. Here is a brief bit on Teradata.
This is a “service”? wtf happened to good database management? Talk about low-hanging fruit!
why is this necessarily a problem, though? these people may have been able to pay a smaller mortgage just fine.
@careless: point taken
Sounds familiar. At work, just last week I was asked for analysis to supprt the expansion of a certain line of business by one wing of the company, and analysis to support the reduction of that same business by another group. Both groups were a bit miffed when I told each of the request of the other…
@anon
(Dis)Economies of scope are what seem to be the problem in this case.
Another thing people don’t get: The Fed’s whole purpose is to protect the too big to fail, and to make them too big. It’s a feature, and that ain’t new, baby.
Heck, I was getting equity loan offers from the bank that was foreclosing on me (Wells).
Based on my own professional experience with Teradata, I’m surprised they managed to actually implement anything useable at all.
I suppose since they are still in business, they must have had some successful implementations, but six years ago their professional services and products were sold to the clueless on the golf course and then supplied to their customers by “experts” with zero relevant experience who were unable to even minimally use their own products. They literally wasted millions and accomplished nothing for the company I was working with at the time.
Understandably, that project of theirs permanently made me never want to be see their products again, so I haven’t kept up with what they’ve been doing recently.
Disclaimers: I currently consult for a major bank that uses Teradata somewhere (It’s a big bank, I don’t actually know what they use it for and don’t desire to do the research to find out), but I have no reason to believe it’s the same bank referenced above. At the time of my experiences with Teradata, I was working with a major custom ecommerce company, so that may not be directly releveant to their banking business relationships.
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