Check Scans Save Time and Money

Glen Fest
December 2006
Bank Technology News

Following are excerpts from an article that appeared in the December 2006 edition of Bank Technology News

Small banks embracing branch image capture

Typing an extra 50 keystrokes per transaction leaves tellers with a lot less time to pitch home refis and CDs to account holders.

That at least is the thinking at many small banks these days, and it’s leading them to deploy front-line check image scanning technology in great numbers.  This technology should, in theory, allow tellers to shift their duties away from time-consuming, mundane data entry and focus on the customer. 

Branch Image Capture (BIC), long a questionable investment for banks fearful of burdening their tellers, is enjoying a major surge in the industry. 

According to a recent Celent report, “several hundred” institutions are lining up to install BIC technology across their footprint – and not just in far-flung offices out in the sticks.

About 900 institutions across the country have deployed branch image capture with 75,000 distributed capture points, including more than half involving teller capture.

Celent has forecast that branch image capture seats will exceed 200,000 by 2009 – that is, if vendors can handle the current installation backlog of about 90,000 seats; the biggest participants are small banks and credit unions, says Celent analyst Bob Meara.

Alogent, whose bread has been buttered by large-bank orders, partners with Fiserv ITI and other core vendors to sell teller/back counter image capture downstream.  Rival Metavante has built up a lineup of 350 BIC customers, while Alogent (with 250 customers) has sold more seat licenses (41,000 to Metavante’s 28,000, per Celent).  Other major BIC vendors include Carreker Corp., NCR, Open Solutions, WAUSAU.

Although it is similar technology to remote deposit capture, the adoption trend for BIC is almost inverse to RDC.  Banks between $1 billion and $5 billion in assets are placing remote deposit solutions at client sites as fast as they can plug the hardware in.

Branch image capture, meanwhile, dominates distributed capture deployments in the sub-$1 billion class.  The reason, say experts, is BIC’s suitability for retail customers.