TAMPA, Fla. – Suncoast Schools FCU has found that its members who take advantage of its OFX functionalities are on average cream of the crop members who view the CU as their primary financial institution. So once Suncoast Schools converted from Corillian's home banking system that included an OFX server, to its own in-house home banking system, it needed to get a new OFX server without disrupting their members' OFX needs. "We have a lot of members who use it as a planning tool for finances and budgeting," said Karen Burns, Suncoast Schools Vice President of E-Business. What they actually use is data from their home banking system that they import into their personal finance solutions, either Microsoft Money or Intuit's Quicken. OFX is the standard used to seamlessly import that data into those programs. Only about 6,000 of Suncoast's 60,000 active online banking users import their data using OFX, but these are PFI members, so their happiness is vital, said Burns. Fortunately Suncoast didn't have to do much research to find a new OFX server. As a member of Open Financial Solutions, a consortium of CUs looking for better technology to help serve members more efficiently (see related story page 20), Suncoast went with an OFX server other member CUs of OFS were using. That is the Innovision Financial Server, the OFX server of Innovision Corporation. Some standards have come and gone, but Suncoast thinks the new server was worth the investment because OFX is here to stay. "I don't see anything on the horizon that's going to change, and it wasn't an option to just turn off OFX when we got off our Corillian system," said Kevin Johnson, SVP of IT for Suncoast Schools. The CU is actually still running the Corillian server parallel with the new Innovision server to ensure a smooth conversion. Bill Cary, Innovision's CEO, said OFX is very complex and it continues to evolve. If credit unions don't keep up with the latest changes, their old OFX servers may not work with the personal financial software products any more. In fact Microsoft and Intuit have strict certification processes for financials looking to use OFX with their software programs. "Many of the prior implementations are not maintainable any more. OFX continues to evolve and grow through the advent of underlying technologies. Various domains and industries are recognizing the power of the protocol," said Cary. Innovision has about six large CU clients and about 20 total clients, including large brokerage houses and banks. He said as wireless becomes more robust, OFX will be the protocol driving much of the functionality financial customers will want. "The biggest driver right now is personal financial management solutions. Any credit union that has members interested in using Quicken or Money need to have an OFX server," said Cary. [email protected]