Bank of Boston becomes 2d U.S. bank to install IBM check-imaging system.

Bank of Boston Corp. said last week that it has put into production a check-imaging system from International Business Machines Corp., the second U.S. bank to do so.

Bank of Boston's installation came on the heels of Mellon Bank Corp.'s announcement last month that it had become the first bank in the country to put IBM's High Performance Transaction Processing System (HPTS) into day-to-day use for its "proof-of-deposit" operation.

HPTS accelerates check processing by scanning paper documents into digitized images. The system can electronically recognize handwritten dollar amounts on each check, eliminating much of the manual work of bank proof operators.

In addition to Bank of Boston and Mellon, about a dozen large banks are now using check-imaging systems from Unisys Corp., AT&T Global Information Solutions Corp., and Banctec Inc.

Bank of Boston officials said they at first saw check-imaging technology as a way to achieve quantum-leap improvements in bank-office productivity.

"The preliminary object was to ... reduce the labor-intensiveness of cheek processing," said Marianne Crowe, an imaging product development manager at Bank of Boston. She added that HPTS is capable of recognizing dollar amounts of between 30% and 40% of checks processed. "As we fine-tune the system, our goal is to get to 50% and higher."

But Ms. Crowe added that in addition to boosting efficiency, the bank foresaw revenue-enhancing benefits to HPTS as well.

"Our long-term objective was to build this base plate technology within the check world so we could develop and produce enhancements to really take to the market."

Bank of Boston is processing about 50,000 checks a day through HPTS, Ms. Crowe said, adding that the bank expects to process 150,000 items daily by the end of this year.

Chuck Pierce, a product manager in Bank of Boston's cash-management products unit, said the bank will start to roll out a number of image-related products for its corporate clients.

"Many of our customers who are in paper-intensive industries such as insurance, health care, and mutual funds began using document imaging in the time frame" the bank was installing HPTS, Mr. Pierce said. "In our ongoing discussions with them, we realized there were opportunities to provide them with check images that they could integrate into their workflows."

Mn Pierce said that $41 billion-asset Bank of Boston will introduce two new image-assisted cash-management products early next year.

One product will provide companies with bulk check storage on compact disks that can be read from a personal computer.

The other offering will be an enhancement to the bank's "positive pay" antifraud system, a process whereby corporate clients transmit to their bank data about checks they have written so the information can be used to spot counterfeit checks.

Mr. Pierce said the enhancement will give corporate customers the ability to "see a suspect check on their computer screens to determine if it's a fraudulent item," greatly reducing the chance of bogus checks getting through.

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