CALABASSAS, Calif. – Digital Insight's newly named president/CEO and chairman, Jeff Stiefler, is joining a strong, growing company and industry – and he knows it. "I've been a keen observer of the financial services industry for years and years. There's been this tectonic movement toward the Internet. It's the center of this next revolution within financial services. I love the fact the business model has been proven," he said. He compared consumers' increasing reliance on the Internet in their financial lives to what the ATM did for consumers years ago. Stiefler, 57, cited DI's strong balance sheet, marketplace position, and growth opportunity as reasons for taking this job. "The company's balance sheet is clean and strong. It has incredible growth opportunity," said Stiefler who already makes his home in DI's backyard in Southern California. Digital Insight's recent 10-Q quarterly report is impressive. Total revenue for the three months ended June 30 are $37.3 million, a 16% increase from the $32.1 million for the same period last year. The company's upside is hard to gauge because it's not just about adding new clients – it also generates new revenue from added end users from existing clients. So if ABC credit union client ups its Net banking penetration from 12% to 15%, DI directly benefits. Its end user numbers are also on the rise. Active users jumped 24% from June 30 last year to this year to a total of four million users. DI's product line has diversified. Aside from its core products of Net banking and bill payment it offers online cash management (very popular for CUs getting into business lending); account aggregation; online statements; a portal product; online loan applications; access to its 24×7 call center; and others. Much of its innovation in recent years has been in marketing to consumers through multiple delivery channels as is done through its Advanced Target Marketing suite. Stiefler, a former president of American Express and president and CEO of IDS Financial Services, has spent the last eight years running a number of private equity firms. He has experience in analyzing companies for acquisition. It's not clear if Stiefler's M&A qualities were what attracted the DI board, but acquisitions have certainly played a role in DI's growth historically. The deal with AnyTime Access gave it instant entry into call center lending. It also gobbled up once fierce competitors including nFront and VIFI, which was a growing competitor in the CU arena. Stiefler knows retail banking. He served as a Senior Vice President with Citicorp in its consumer lending business. He got hooked up with American Express while serving as CEO of IDS Financial Services. At IDS, he helped increase net income from $60 million to $500 million, making it an attractive financial company. American Express acquired it and Stiefler became a president of American Express and later joined the company's board. With obvious banking credentials, Stiefler joins a company with credit union roots (founded by former XP Systems employees) that gets about half of its revenue from the credit union industry. So what does he know about credit unions? "They have been in many respects at the forefront of innovation in financial services. They adopt early, experiment to try new things to benefit their members. We always looked with great respect and jealousy at the relationship credit unions have with their members," said Stiefler. Stiefler will take over in early September for John Dorman. For Dorman, 52, this fulfills a lifelong dream of early retirement. Dorman will remain on the DI board put pass the chairmanship to Stiefler. Dorman said it wasn't a given that whoever DI chose as its new president/CEO would also be named chairman. "We left that open. When we found someone with the caliber of Jeff, we thought the right statement would be to make him chairman immediately," said Dorman. Dorman landed the DI job back in 1997 after selling a company he founded, Treasury Services Corporation, to Oracle. In his newfound free time, he and his wife plan to continue their philanthropic work and split their time between their homes in Santa Monica and Colorado. Dorman will also do some entrepreneurial teaching at the University of California. Dorman gave his take on two recent developments in the online space. One being the recently announced merger of Liberty Internet Services and CUNA Network Services. He said the new company will be very strong in Web hosting, which isn't a major revenue generator for DI. "It's a small part of our business," he said, also noting that many of the CUs they host are small. As for Online Resources' recent release of MoneyHQ, which integrates and bundles a number of online products, including bill presentment, bill pay, Net banking, account aggregation and P2P payments, Dorman doesn't see what the big deal is. "I'm puzzled about what all the fanfare is all about," said Dorman. He said it's really building on the account aggregation model which DI launched a few years ago as well as money movement which it also added recently. As for ORCC's claim of a free product aside from the per-user charge, Dorman said that strategy may not make it in this market. [email protected]