The most effective business performance strategy a credit union 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 regulations and to efficiently and effectively retrieve the documentation during audit to prove compliance.

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 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 credit unions overhead, and makes proving compliance a difficult and time consuming process.



• To process a 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 credit union.

• You turn your paper files into an electronic image that can be easily shared across the credit unions 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 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 regulations