Joyce Moed | Technology Samples

Check 21 technology

By Joyce Moed, Reporter

BASKING RIDGE, N.J.–Although the credit union industry has seen a shift toward Check 21 technology–and the urgency was heightened when the Federal Reserve announced its accelerated plan to reduce the number of check-processing centers–Affinity Federal Credit Union here has been on the forefront of this new technology. As a result, it is experiencing a dramatic increase in employee efficiency and annual cost savings that will exceed $100,000.

“We were looking at new systems to store our images,” said Robert Plante, AVP of strategy and consulting services at Affinity FCU. “We wanted to streamline everything and make the services more beneficial to our members. We also did some conservative cost estimates and found that the amount of time tellers were spending in the back office scanning checks instead of interacting with members was substantial. Using a conservative number of 15 minutes of scanning time each day times 100 tellers, that’s about 6,500 hours per year we won’t have to take them away from the teller line.”

To reach its goals, the deployment involved interfacing Integrated Media Management (IMM) products, TotaleReceipts and Teller Item Capture, with the XP Systems core platform, Affinity FCU’s imaging system and Members United Corporate Credit Union, its clearinghouse. The deployment was completed in stages, beginning with a proof of concept to ensure that the integration was seamless. The result is that Affinity CU has completely automated its check deposit and Check 21 process from the teller line to the host system and its clearinghouse.
This is how it works:

With IMM’s Teller Item Capture solution, Affinity has eliminated the manual entry of check data by scanning deposited checks at the teller station and because the system uploads the check data to their host, key strokes and errors have been reduced. Teller Item Capture, in combination with TotaleReceipts, encrypts the resulting PDF with the check image as part of the transaction record for future reference. As the data is accumulated, a cash letter is created and may be distributed to the clearinghouse at any time during the day. The electronic process also keeps tellers in balance all day because each transaction must be balanced before it is completed.

The credit union finished installation in all 22 of its branches and department locations in November 2007.

“Our annual courier costs were about $98,000 and those have been totally eliminated,” Plante said. “Efficiency has also increased because anyone can look up at any transaction, so members are having their questions answered right away. Before, an employee might have to go find the transaction and it could take three or four days before the member receiving a response.”

Affinity FCU processes 8,000 to 9,000 checks each day, and the check data can be sent to the clearinghouse either on an automatic schedule or manually, based on the number of checks or the total dollar amount of the checks. This has allowed the CU to send checks earlier in the day when the fees are less.

Plante estimated the total cost of hardware/software to implement the new procedure to be about $100,000, which was made up for with the reduction of the courier cost.

In all, the pros seen, Plante said, are the savings and time and money.

“Now all this is put right into the system, and can be found by Social Security number, name or amount,” he said. “The research time was cut to nothing.” The con, he said, was the training time.
“The one thing is you have to have a plan,” Plante advised to other CUs hoping to implement something similar. “I worked with a small team. There was a total of eight of us, all from different departments.”

This team then trained the staff.

“The main eight stayed through the process, which included bi-weekly meetings,” Plante said. “As we were doing piloting and testing, everybody followed the same rules. There was lots of testing. Then you develop a roll-out plan, and hope for the best.”