IRVINE, Calif., April 5, 2000 (PRIMEZONE) -- The dramatic acceleration in the deployment of buy-side, sell-side and marketplace B2B solutions is increasing demand for a new generation of Internet-centric financial services that can be integrated to new B2B systems and business processes. Xpedian, Inc. (OTCBB:XPDN) announced Tuesday that it is nearing completion of www.EstatePlanet.com, a premier online B2B Financial Services and Estate Planning Portal.
The portal is designed to inform financial services professionals and their potential clients of the needs, benefits and strategies of estate planning, while also driving traffic to www.Instrust.com, and other featured sites that will be phased in by Xpedian, Inc.
"We intend for www.EstatePlanet.com to be the first place that financial services professionals look for quick and complete answers to their financial and estate planning questions," said Dale Chapman, President and CEO of Xpedian, Inc. "The site is slated to grow to over 500 pages of content and will be supported by both direct sales efforts and advertising in industry trade magazines and publications," said Chapman.
Xpedian, Inc. is a business-to-business marketing organization. They will market their interactive approach to estate and financial planning via the Internet, providing CPAs, Insurance Agents, Stockbrokers, Attorneys, Human Resource Departments, and Financial Planners with sophisticated interactive solutions for their clients. Their systems will empower financial services professionals by providing(1) State-of-the-art products and services at a fraction of the cost and time of current sources; (2) Educational tools and resources to guide planners through the process; and (3) All necessary documentation to enact plans, including support for plan implementation. Xpedian, Inc. acquired licensing agreements for the distribution/marketing rights to sophisticated Artificial Intelligence.
Also on Tuesday, Bank of America (NYSE:BAC), America's largest bank, and Ariba, Inc. (Nasdaq:ARBA), the leading business-to-business (B2B) eCommerce platform provider, today jointly announced an agreement designed to broaden and accelerate B2B eCommerce adoption through an unprecedented, comprehensive suite of Internet-centric B2B financial services and a new B2B marketplace for Bank of America's customers.
Under terms of the strategic alliance:
-- Bank of America will create a B2B financial services engine
to be deployed first on the Ariba B2B Commerce Platform to
globally deliver a full range of B2B financial services on
the Internet;
-- A new company, Banc of America Marketplace LLC, will be formed
to create and operate a B2B marketplace, powered by the Ariba
platform, that Bank of America will make available to its two
million business customers;
-- Bank of America will use the Ariba B2B Commerce Platform
throughout its worldwide operations as its interface to the
marketplace and to efficiently manage its own procurement
operations on the Internet with its global supplier base.
-- Bank of America and Ariba will share in transaction-based
revenue streams from the B2B financial services engine and
Bank of America Marketplace.
Bank of America plans to create a B2B financial services engine, deployed on the Ariba B2B Commerce Platform, designed to deliver a comprehensive suite of financial services. Delivered as open Ariba B2B Commerce Services, these financial services will target horizontal and vertical marketmakers, marketplace participants and individual buying organizations, whether they are using the Ariba platform or other solutions.
The services are expected to include electronic invoicing capabilities; extensive payments capabilities such as card, Automated Clearing House (ACH), wire transfer and foreign exchange; information integration via Web, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Extensible Markup Language (XML), and security and authentication. Bank of America is the leader in wire transfers, processing US$650 billion daily through more than 120,000 wire transfers globally. Bank of America also leads the industry in deployment of B2B digital certificates and is a founding member of Identrus, a global authentication consortium.
Banc of America Marketplace LLC
A new company, Banc of America Marketplace LLC, will be formed as a subsidiary of Bank of America to create and operate a B2B marketplace. Banc of America Marketplace will provide web-based procurement automation and selling solutions targeting the bank's two million business clients.
The initial focus will be to serve the bank's small and medium-size business customers, providing access to the bank's preferred suppliers at negotiated contract prices while creating more efficient procurement services. Subsequently, Bank of America plans to offer these customers additional products and services that will further leverage this infrastructure. The bank plans to develop vertical communities within the marketplace to serve the special buying and selling needs of customers in specific industries.
Once developed, the marketplace is also expected to provide the bank's two million business customers with access to buy and sell to each other using various pricing mechanisms from traditional catalog pricing to exchanges which use bid/ask pricing or auction pricing. The bank anticipates developing the ability for customers to use these services through a variety of desktop or wireless Internet-enabled devices.
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