A Business Case for Branch Capture - What are the operational implications?

On March 16th 2007 NACHA's check electronification opportunities for point-of-sale (POS) check conversion rules will change to Back Office Conversion (BOC).

At a recent TAWPI Boston Chapter meeting held at the Boston office of the Federal Reserve, chapter members tackled topics like the impact of this rule change, along with remote deposit capture, a presentation given by the product manager from Citizens Bank, a member of the federal reserve bank discussed their take on RDC and the industry as a whole while the Chief Technology Officer of COCC (a service provider to banks in New England) discussed the potential successes and tribulations in rolling out a branch capture and a remote deposit capture solution for your organization.

As back office conversion is expected to be the next best thing since gelato hit the United States; It was refreshing to hear some reality at this meeting that there will in fact be some unforeseen problems for branch offices who are looking to roll out BOC. Clearly the ROI models are solid. But what are those operational issues that branches will need to look at and that the vendors out there may not be addressing:

1. Balancing and reconciliation; more batches equals more adjustments to reconcile. Many argue it is better when the branch balances the checks.

2. Adjustments- Branches will need to look out for piggy back checks run through the scanner, unimimageable checks or checks with a heavy background. How do you deal with checks with these type of problems once they have been captured at the branch? The solution becomes very teller dependent.

3. CAR- LAR rates are reported to be at 70%.

4. What do you do with miscellaneous documents?

5. Check Storage; what's the best way to store these checks ASP model vs. a Licensed Model

6. What is the actual numbers of checks that can be processed and what can these support systems actually handle? The answer may surprise you...

Need more answers regarding remote deposit capture and branch capture? Attend TAWPI's Payments in Transition Conference in Las Vegas this March 7th and 8th. The federal reserve will be our keynote along with a follow up presentation by Celent with many more actionable case studies and experiences. Visit http://www.tawpi.org/Payments07.html to register.