Money-Saving Strategies

By Mark Brousseau

During the interactive roundtable luncheon at the 2009 TAWPI Forum & Expo in Washington, D.C. this week, attendees shared the best money-saving strategies they have implemented in the past year.

Below are some of the best ideas.

... Take good care of your scanner maintenance technician and they will reciprocate.
... Use of early tracking of customer replies to mailings in transit can help you avoid the cost associated with sending second notices
... Consolidate IT archive solutions; getting rid of outdated technology can save you big bucks
... Use slightly slower (and less expensive) disk storage in place of ultra high-speed archiving
... Enable internal and external end-users to access your archive to eliminate the need for dedicated back-office staff to handle all archive requests
... Ensure that personnel initiatives are team-based, not individual-based
... Take a hard look at open source technologies for IT back-office functions; they work fine and saved one end-user hundreds of thousands of dollars a year
... Educate your staff on the cost -- and potential impact -- of errors; other strategies for reducing errors: send errors back to the "team" that created them, have personnel who don't make mistakes mentor others, and don't be afraid to look at even small errors with relatively smaller savings
... Implement a program to recognize your best performers; symbolism helps
... Use a MICR database or other account lookup technology to reduce data entry requirements
... When shopping for an ECM solution, make sure its functionality is aligned with your business needs; you shouldn't buy features you don't plan to use
... Leverage the Internet to drive improvements in reject processing
... Move to image cash letters (ICLs) to eliminate daily trips to the bank branch
... Adjust your staffing to reduce the money you need to pay out for shift differentials
... Implement Lean Six Sigma
... Move to electronic signatures to save time and to reduce the number of documents required
... Adjust end-user pricing to further incentivize them to move to more efficient processing methods
... Consider remote keying with recognition technology
... Never pass up a free lunch -- definitely attend the interactive roundtable lunch each year

Ways To Help Prevent Fraud

Posted by Mark Brousseau

Deutsche Bank offers the following tips for proactively helping prevent fraud:

1. Know your customer
2. Create new account opening procedures
3. Never provide personal information in response to an unsolicited request
4. If you believe a contact may be illegitimate, get in touch with the financial institution yourself
5. Review account statements regularly to ensure all charges are correct
6. Know your employees
7. Employees need to be aware of and report any suspicious transactions or activity
8. Review hiring and mailroom procedures
9. Monitor activity (new accounts/establish thresholds)
10. Secure all check stock
11. Replace paper documents with electronic payments when possible
12. Move check disbursement activity to electronic payment
13. Conduct surprise audits
14. Understand the liability for fraud
15. Utilize positive pay (payee) services
16. Educate and train employees
17. Never share passwords or utilize them as generic passwords
18. Recertify users and access priveleges regularly
19. Do not write down passwords
20. Ensure segregation of duties
21. Assign priveleges based on job responsibilities, not convenience or availability
22. Do not deviate from procedures without a documented exception approval process
23. Carefully destroy papers with sensitive or identifying information
24. Ensure supervisory oversight by making managers accountable

For more information, you can access Deutsche Bank's Payments Fraud Prevention Webcast at www.highlinewebseminars.com/deutschebank or visit www.db.com/gtb.