The most effective business performance strategy a bank can deploy is to establish a document imaging system.

Identity verification and fraud detection:
The requirement to check signature cards when processing a customer transaction to verify the person is authorized to carry out the transaction.

Internal and External Audits:
To have completed all the necessary paperwork to comply with government and banking regulations and to efficiently and effectively retrieve the documentation during audit to prove compliance.

Commercial credit and consumer lending:
To process loan applications efficiently, gathering all the necessary documents and servicing the loan until it is paid off in a way that demonstrates excellent customer service and complies with government and banking regulations.

• Signature cards are not instantly available to everyone that needs them. Signature cards are filed in filing cabinets that require staff to leave their work area to retrieve it for verification purposes. Or worse yet, staff may simply process the transaction without verifying the signature to confirm that the person is authorized to carry out the transaction because the verification process is awkward and time consuming.



• During an audit, staff is required to hunt down and provide documentation to the auditor. This takes staff away from other duties, increases the banks overhead, and makes proving compliance a difficult and time consuming process.



• To process a commercial or consumer loan, documentation must be gathered from multiple sources and many times different people need access to the same information. It is not uncommon for a document to already be sitting in one loan file which is also needed to process or document an entirely different loan. Unless the loan officer knows of its availability, requests must be made of the customer to once again provide duplicate information to the bank.

• Citizens First Bank no longer has its tellers searching through dozens of file cabinets or calling another branch to request information. They can instantly access the needed information through their document imaging system to confirm that the customer is authorized to complete the transaction. They can refuse payment if the signature on the check doesn't match the record in their document imaging system. This is accomplished instantly without them having to leave their work area.



• At Hudson River Bank & Trust if any of their customers want to cash a check at a branch that is not their local Hudson bank, staff at that branch are able to retrieve an image of the customer's signature card in seconds, verify the customer's identity and fulfill the transaction.



• Document imaging also makes internal and external audits less labor-intensive. An example is Hancock Bank where a credit analyst audit of 200+ updated financials was compiled in about two hours by one person. In the past, this process required about eight hours by multiple staff members.



• Wauwatosa Savings Bank has found that because of their document imaging system, auditors don't have to wait for a file which in turn makes the entire process much shorter and less disruptive. The bank has also saved money by eliminating much of the time required by staff to retrieve paper files.



• Processing more complex commercial loans tends to be more challenging than consumer loans because there can be multiple borrowers, guarantors, loans and collateral involved. Central Pacific Bank now find the loan files instantly available to employees in ten departments, significantly reducing the time spent retrieving documents for credit administration, compliance review, and servicing payoffs because of their document imaging system.

• You turn your paper files into an electronic image that can be easily shared across the banks computer network



• You can restrict access to certain types of files to only those employees that legitimately need access to that information



• You produce an audit trail of who has accessed the information



• You can instantly find the information you need using the simple search function that will accumulate, organize, and present the information on ones computer screen even if the documents have to be retrieved from multiple repositories across the network



• You can have multiple people look at the same information at the same time



• You can store an electronic backup copy of the information offsite in case of a disaster

• Inefficiencies resulting in lost time
• Makes job more difficult to do
• Audits are disruptive and require significant staff time to complete
• Increased costs of employee time, filing cabinets and paper files, copy machine costs, etc.
• There is no backup of critical documents stored offsite making the bank susceptible to significant disruptions due to a disaster
• Places limitations on customer service
• Makes it more difficult to comply with government and banking regulations

• Saves time with any task that requires access to customer information
• Makes jobs easier to do
• Makes the audit process much shorter and less disruptive
• Reduces costs associated with employee time, filing and storage costs and copy machine costs
• Provides offsite backup of critical documents
• Improves customer service
• Improves compliance with government and banking regulations