Branchless footprint expansion is an accelerating trend in the down economy, particularly for community institutions that are using remote deposit capture to play much larger with less brick-and-mortar overhead.
First State Bank in Central Texas, for example, recently deployed a solution from Goldleaf called Remote Deposit Express with the aim of reducing costs associated with business deposits. Cassanda Wiggins, svp of treasury management, says growing the deposit base beyond the $200 million bank’s five-branch central Texas footprint with minimal expense drove the deployment, as did soft benefits such as cementing relationships between the bank and its commercial customers.
“While the staff cost savings are being evaluated, the seamless transmission of customers’ deposit files in to our daily image capture processing is very effective,” says Wiggins.
An additional attraction was the solution’s balancing component—which ensures the customer’s deposit matches the number of items being deposited. “This alone saves the back office significant time. And since implementing Goldleaf’s RDX solution, the bank has never been out of balance on a transmission to its processor,” says Wiggins.
This level of functionality is getting a harder look from deposit-hungry institutions that don’t have the funds to spend the $20,000 or more in monthly expenses in opening and maintaining brick and mortar branches. That’s good news for Goldleaf and competitors in the RDC such as BankServ, NetDeposit, Metavante and dozens of others. The business case for any bank should be apparent enough to take remote capture out of early adoption and into the mainstream: In a recent survey, Raddon Financial Group reported that 45 percent of small businesses expect a decrease in revenue in 2009, and 37 percent expect flat growth.
“Banks are using remote capture as more of a strategic tool now,” says Bruce Krajewski, an svp at Goldleaf. “Early in the lifecycle of remote capture, the use was pretty limited. But it’s become more of a core function now.”
