Benefits Summary:
An efficient, cost-effective alternative to the bank's previous high-maintenance, high-cost system.

Stephen Ward of UBOC predicts that upgrading the bank's security systems will save roughly US$800,000.

Merger activity had left Union Bank of California (UBOC) with an accumulation of different alarm systems -- some owned, some leased, some old, some new.

"We were paying a very high charge on the leases, so we had a high-maintenance, high-cost system," says Stephen Ward, senior vice president and director of corporate services at UBOC. The bank was also getting numerous false alarms and incurring associated charges.

A better alternative.
Fortunately, UBOC found an efficient, cost-effective alternative: it decided to replace old alarms with new Diebold alarms and to outsource security monitoring to Diebold. In updating its security technology, UBOC had multiple goals.

"We wanted to improve our service and reduce the overall cost," says Ward. "We also wanted an additional level of security so that if somebody interrupted lines from the branch, we would still have service."

Starting in August 1999, Diebold began replacing existing alarms with new Diebold devices, connected to Diebold's Event Monitoring Center. The primary alarm is transmitted through the bank's network, saving UBOC the cost of outside lines, while the back-up goes through a control channel cellular system, less expensive than a regular cellular system.

The goals of the new security program converged nicely with those of a bank-wide UBOC initiative, Mission Excel, which sought to improve the bank's efficiency ratio by reducing expenses and improving revenue. In fact, Ward predicts that upgrading the bank's security systems will save UBOC roughly US$800,000.

Staying in control.
And despite outsourcing to Diebold, UBOC still has access to its security information in the bank's central control room. "We monitor the alarms," explains Ben Casterline, account executive at Diebold, "but also give the bank control of how we do that by offering them a window into our monitoring system. They can see everything that we do."