PLANO, Texas -- Southwest Corporate has reached a significant milestone in its conversion of paper to image processing: 400 member credit unions and 1,500 branches are now depositing checks remotely using imaging technology.
That amounts to nearly one-third of all Southwest Corporate members and achieves a goal the $14 billion institution had hoped to reach by the end of this year.
Brad Ganey, Southwest Corporate's vice president of item processing, credited the speedy conversion to the willingness of credit unions to embrace the new technology and his implementation team's dedication.
Southwest Corporate's suite of remote deposit services include Teller Capture, Branch Capture and Business Capture, and processes items for credit unions from Hawaii to Puerto Rico.
Houston-based, $240 million Primeway Federal Credit Union was the most recent Southwest Corporate client to make the switch.
"Before, our Brenham branch would send checks to Houston for encoding one day, and the following day the checks would be sent to the Fed. That's too long. Now when we have an item with a two-day hold, it actually enters the system for processing before the hold expires," said Vicki Squires, Primeway vice president of office operations.
Squires also said imaging, which provides a history of items at every workstation, has significantly reduced her operational losses because it improves the quality of teller hold decisions and reduces research time for management.
--handerson@cutimes.com
