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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Ken Kido Keeping Up With Credit Card Advances Keeps Seafirst Job Exciting

It may be just a piece of plastic, but there’s a lot of you in your credit card.

And there will be more in the future, said Ken Kido, who heads the Seafirst Bankcard Center on Sunset Hill.

Already, computers programmed with information on your spending habits can pick out uncharacteristic purchases as you - or a thief - stand by a register, he said.

Called Falcon, the system alerts operators who attempt to call the card holder to determine who is making the purchase. Or the merchant will be told to call Seafirst to confirm the transaction.

If the card has been stolen, it can be cancelled on the spot.

Falcon identifies a case of fraud or theft in about 5 percent of suspect purchases, Kido said. That may seem infrequent, he said, but Falcon and other systems adopted in the last two years have enabled Seafirst to cut card losses due to fraud and theft by half.

Losses are a constant concern of Kido, who has directed the card center for four years. Not only are thieves and scam artists constantly looking for ways to beat the system, some card holders are always on the ragged edge of their credit limits.

But Kido said he welcomes the challenges, which also include providing the best possible service to card holders and merchants.

“I’ve got the best job in the bank,” he said.

Kido, who has no college degree, has been with Seafirst 18 years. He started in purchasing and clerical work, eventually becoming head of corporate supplies and inventory control.

With nowhere else to go in that division, he moved into credit cards 11 years ago.

Kido said he was exposed to most aspects of the bank card operation over the next seven years, a period that included the move to Spokane when the bank card center opened here in 1989. The center services 1.5 million Visa and MasterCard accounts, of which 350,000 belong to Seafirst’s parent, Bank of America.

Kido said card services is a self-contained business within Seafirst. He and the center’s 500 employees do everything from producing the cards themselves to collections, from compliance to credit-risk management.

Kido said he tries to make sure employees understand how their actions can affect another department. How, for example, a bad credit decision is going to impose a greater burden on collections, and possibly lead to a loss for the bank further down the line.

The credit card business is so competitive that even collections is geared to being as accommodating as possible, he said.

“We view it as a sales area,” he said, with the opportunity to win customer allegiance by establishing the correct tone when discussing the state of his or her account.

Delinquencies are broken down by days past due, with a different corps of operators assigned to each segment. The further past due, Kido said, the sterner the caller.

With the aid of powerful dialing machines and other technology, Seafirst collectors make more than 10,000 calls a day to delinquent customers, he noted.

On the other major side of the operation, customer service, operators and “voice-response units” - robots - take thousands of calls a day on concerns like balances, payment dates, and available credit.

Kido said the move to Spokane has enabled Seafirst to provide better customer service than it could from Seattle, where employee turnover was three times what it is now.

The bank spends far less on training, and does almost no advertising to fill vacant positions, he said.

“This worked out better than any of us could have hoped,” Kido said, adding that the center’s performance is the equal of any in the industry.

Although he has reached the top in credit card services, as he did in corporate supplies, Kido said he is not looking to move on.

He said he thrives on the day-to-day competition as well as long-term challenges. At a convention last fall, for example, Visa unveiled a card with an imbedded computer chip that could be programmed with financial, insurance, health and other information.

“We could have one card that is basically your wallet,” he said.

Kido said such developments keep him content in what he does. “I don’t think I could be bored,” he said.