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M&T Bank Case Study

Resource Type
Case Study

M&T Bank turns to HughesON™ managed network services to ensure business continuity and 24/7 customer care at its branches and ATM locations.

M&T Bank is a commercial bank with more than 775 retail and commercial branches and more than 1,800 partner ATMs in eight states, the District of Columbia, and Ontario, Canada. The bank was recently recognized as a top small business bank in the country by Greenwich Associates for providing excellent banking solutions and services to its small business customers.

"Hughes is distinguished from the competition by providing industry-leading security, extremely robust private networks, and lighting quick provisioning.” Jim Finn, Admin Vice President Network Operations "

This leading regional bank depends on Hughes Network Systems to deliver the needed connectivity and responsive customer support for most of their branches and ATM locations. Unlike many enterprises, M&T needed its backup network to regularly and seamlessly step in and support branch and ATM operations. 

Challenge

Continuity and reliability are critical for banks to remain competitive in today’s marketplace. A network outage could cost millions of dollars and thousands of lost customers. Unfortunately, incidents like excavation accidents, weather calamities, and local telecom loop outages can disrupt business continuity on a regular basis. On average, M&T Bank was experiencing six to ten circuit outages daily across its distributed network of branch banks and ATM locations.

MT& Bank inside

Solution

To keep its distributed branches and partner ATM locations online, the bank selected the HughesON managed network service—part of Hughes’ comprehensive suite of HughesON managed enterprise solutions—to provide a highly reliable, managed broadband backup network. Hughes backs up the bank’s MPLS data circuits with a multitransport broadband offering utilizing DSL, cable, and 4G/LTE wireless technologies depending on each site’s needs.

M&T bank has also deployed the Hughes managed 4G/LTE “crash kit” solution for business continuity. This crash kit program includes a Hughes-supplied a 4G/LTE access device to each branch to allow the bank to quickly add pop-up locations, or quickly open new branches until a terrestrial line can be provisioned. This capability also enhances the bank’s disaster recovery preparedness.

Results

woman at atm

The HughesON solution greatly improved branch and ATM uptime with the Hughes backup network in place, across all locations, allowing M&T Bank to better serve its customers. Further, this solution saved the bank money by greatly reducing the amount previously spent to install and maintain secondary MPLS/T1-based backup networks. Hughes’ proven track record of support and responsiveness also weighed heavily in the bank’s selection of the HughesON solution. The Hughes managed backup solution comes with professional design, installation, and fully managed operations backed by dependable 24/7 customer care that’s willing to go the extra mile to support customers.

It’s all about leveraging the network

In addition to ATM transaction information, the Hughes backup solution ensures nonstop reliability for a number of mission-critical banking applications, including a check cashing, imaging, and processing application. The bank is also in the process of putting Voice-over-IP (VoIP) traffic over the backup network and rolling out an IP trunking infrastructure so both inbound and outbound calls can get through over the Hughes broadband transport when a branch loses its primary MPLS circuit.

The service payoff

“M&T Bank has earned 10 Greenwich Excellence Awards for providing excellent banking solutions and services to its small business customers. Hughes superior network backup solution and dependable 24/7 customer care gives us the confidence that we can deliver exceptional services to our customers and ensure continuous and reliable operations at our branches.” Jim Finn, Admin Vice President Network Operations

“Where Hughes stands out from other providers is their ability to provide a secure, cost-effective network connection to any location in the bank’s geography faster than any traditional carrier. Utilizing the Hughes 4G solution, the bank has installed a secure network connection to a branch or ATM location in as little as 4 hours. Hughes provides a superior dual broadband backup path in the event that either of the broadband networks are interrupted. We are happy with the uptime Hughes delivers,” said Jim Finn.

The business payoff

With Hughes managed network services, M&T Bank realized an immediate cost savings and a greater ability to serve customers. Further, the Hughes solutions does not require a new investment in hardware as the bank is able to leverage their existing equipment to provide the lowest cost possible connectivity across multiple sites. M&T Bank enjoys access to a variety of devices from Fortinet™, Cisco, and Hughes proprietary hardware along with same-day service and maintenance for business continuity.

Next Steps

Leveraging its long and successful partnership with Hughes, M&T Bank has crafted a roadmap that includes several additional Hughes offerings. The bank plans to adopt Hughes’ ActiveTechnologies to deliver added network capacity and stability while also paving the way to a full SD-WAN-enabled future. M&T Bank is also evaluating the Hughes Branch Gateway for rollout across all its branches, recognizing the value of its award winning Fortinet security and enhanced network optimization services.