TOKOPEN SHARPENS BANKING BUSINESS EDGE AT AMERICAN SAVINGS BANK OF NJ

- Cheques and banking documents capture and management

Replacement of a former microfilm archiving system with Tokairo's TokOpen document management solution has helped a respected New Jersey community bank to streamline its backbone enterprise system, improve customer service and sharpen business edge.

Established nearly a hundred years ago, American Savings Bank of NJ - www.asbnj.com - provides a traditional community save and loan service. Like all US banks, ASBNJ has to demonstrate prudent behaviour in respect of keeping a record of cheques before they are entered into the banking system. This requires that financial institutions capture and archive images of cheques before they are processed into the banking system for collection. The traditional solution was microfilm, employed by the Bank for a number of years.

However, as the bank's microfilm hardware became less and less reliable, and maintenance costs for the ageing machines became prohibitive a new solution was required. A major problem was that it was not possible to guarantee that readable images of the cheques were being captured, and time and resource needed to check queried items was unacceptably high.

"We had three main objectives," says ASBNJ Senior VP Eric Heyer. "We required a platform that would ultimately provide enterprise-wide document and image management, empower our staff to provide better customer service, and give us a tool that would sharpen our competitive advantage in the market".

The Bank evaluated numerous alternatives before settling on Champion's solution. "We looked at several banking-specific packages as well as other, more generic systems," says Heyer. "What we found was that TokOpen offered a solid foundation upon which we could build and expand our own applications over time. But, rather than conforming to some vendor's packaged solutions, TokOpen enabled us to fully customise each application area to our precise requirements. While price was not the decisive factor, TokOpen also turned out to be the lowest cost solution".

Champion used its own TellerWork for AutoScan software to provide extended batch information for importing into TokOpen, and it's Image/Automator software to import both the images and index data directly into TokOpen. Tellers simply identify themselves, and start scanning. Because each image flashes on the screen as it is captured, the process now includes a built-in quality control step. The rest of the process is all automated behind the scenes. The tellers' tasks take no more effort than previously, but the results are far more robust.

The Bank decided that the tellers' scanning should not be confined to cheque images. Historically, other teller transaction documents - including deposit and withdrawal tickets, debit and credit forms, and loan coupons - were dated and stored in boxes. Now, the Proof of Deposit task encompasses all teller work. Inside TokOpen, all teller work is stored by teller name, branch number, document description and deposit date.

Research to find a needed document now takes seconds, rather than hours. The Bank is now assured that it can find a legible image of a document. This was never possible in the old microfilm environment. And, because all teller work is now stored in digital format, the images are included in the bank's regular computer backup protocol, facilitating redundant off-site storage.

Tellers now can access all signature documents directly from their workstations in seconds, not minutes. Customer service is both faster and more accurate. Documents can be searched by account number, social security or tax ID number, last name, first name or corporate name.

The Bank also took advantage of TokOpen's advanced security features to control access to these private documents. With the greater emphasis on privacy imposed by recent legislation, the Bank now limits all tellers to "view only" access. No one without supervisory authorization can print, fax, email or in any other way access these private documents. This represents a substantial improvement in privacy over the old physical card files.

With the initial implementation successfully completed, the Bank is now looking at other ways to take advantage of TokOpen, especially its workflow functionality. Further application priorities include mortgage origination and servicing where elimination of paper will improve efficiency and customer service.TokOpen has the ability to integrate with any loan origination software, such as the bank's automated underwriting system. As documents arrive during loan origination, they can be scanned and the image quality controlled for acceptability. Unless there is a legal requirement to retain the original paper documents, they can be disposed of. The images can be routed to the appropriate mortgage processor using TokOpen's workflow function.

Importantly, users can access these documents from within the underwriting system's inquiry or processing screens. This eliminates the need to locate massive paper mortgage files, find documents, re-file the documents and then re-file the files. The time and labour savings are substantial. The improvements in customer service can be equally worthwhile. And eliminating hard copy files can free substantial amounts of valuable floor space.

Other projects being considered include scanning-in safe deposit contracts and access records with an automated sign-in process within TokOpen that will use signature pads to capture digital signature images every time a customer accesses their safe deposit box. In the accounts payable area, the Bank is planning to use TokOpen to workflow-enable the processing of vendor invoices. In the Accounting Department, TokOpen will be used for general ledger journal processing and archiving.

The use of TokOpen within ASBNJ has grown to where it now plays a central and strategic role in the bank's evolving disaster recovery infrastructure. It has been an evolutionary process, with applications added one at a time. In this way, the Bank has been able to learn from each successive implementation. In the future, the Bank plans to expand its use of TokOpen and continue improving both its operations and customer service.