Six Sigma in the Financial Services industry was first started at GE Capital in 1995/1996. GE Finance had a three week program geared towards transactional processes. Starting in 1998, GE embarked on a mission to require its suppliers to work more closely with their Six Sigma initiatives. First Data Corporation, the world's largest credit processor and a key client of GE Capital started Six Sigma in their cardholder facilities in Omaha in 1998 as a pilot followed by Merchant Services and Western Union in 1999/2000. These initiatives failed terribly as soon as GE Capital loosened its control over its suppliers quality initiatives.

 However, the initiative was taken up by Bank One and some other banks that worked with First Data. Also, American Express followed suit. These first forrays into Six Sigma received a second serious push when Bank of America decided to introduce Six Sigma in the financial services industry. The difference between First Data and Bank of America was that Bank of America made the conscious decision to start Six Sigma only after it had stopped its acquiring spree of the late 1990s. I would say that from BoA the idea spread quickly into the operations of large scale transactional processing such as insurance providers, mortgage bankers etc. Banks such as Bank One, Chase etc. followed suit starting at around 2001. Bank One, which was founded by statisticians focused on its growth strategy and development of datamining technology before it went into six sigma. In general, you can say that the financial services industry seriously started looking at Six Sigma at around 1998 in the areas of third-party processors and strategic alliance partners (back office operations not visible to clients) and that Bank of America was the main driver that pushed six sigma to companies that are in direct contact with its customers. The two key success stories that fueled the interest in Six Six Sigma were GE Capital (phase I), Bank of America and and to some degree Morgan JP (phase II). Now you have a dynamic of its own where even large hospital providers such as HCA are seriously looking at six sigma. .