Following up on its recent announcement that it would build a check image exchange service and offer it to all U.S. financial institutions in 2004, the New York Clearing House Association said through its Electronic Clearing Services subsidiary Tuesday that it has already begun offering consulting services to banks that want to get more heavily involved in imaging.
ECS, which itself is a unit of the New York Clearing House's Small Value Payments Co. division, said that it had selected Global Concepts, an Atlanta-based payments consultancy, as its "preferred vendor" for the service, which is meant to offer advice not only about imaging and image exchange but also about electronic check presentment. Global Concepts has advised the companies planning the image exchange network, and also worked with the Federal Reserve Board on its landmark study of check volumes.
The idea behind the consulting push is to get banks ready to plug into the image exchange network once the company starts offering it. Eight of the 20 major banks that own SVPCo are expected to start using it next year.
"The aim is to help banks understand the value proposition of image and image exchange and what they need to do to implement it," said Susan Long, an executive director of ECS. The consulting was meant to be helpful to banks at all stages of imaging, from those that were just considering getting started to those that already had systems in place.
"One of the things banks have been struggling with is the business case for ECP and image, and we have comprehensive, sophisticated tools to analyze its benefits," Ms. Long said.
She said ECS decided that suggesting the use of consultants was the best way to make bankers aware of her company's research, which includes a study conducted earlier this year on image and image exchange. The study involved 21 banks: the 20 SVPCo owners and one customer bank.
Hank Farrar, the president and chief operating officer of SVPCo, said that some middle-tier banks were fence-sitting on image and that the consulting service could give them a good way to learn more about the business case and implementation methods.
"If a bank hasn't made a decision to implement image and image exchange, they now have this opportunity, which adds a sense of reality to it," Mr. Farrar said. The service is available to all banks for "reasonable consulting fees," he said.
Among the topics that are being suggested: image capture/archive business case development, review and enhancement, image implementation, electronic adjustments, day-two check operations, and implementation of image technology.
