IBM Pursues Imaging Partnerships
While International Business Machines Corp.'s high-profile imaging system for check processing remains in development, the computer giant has moved steadily to adapt the technology to other document-handling tasks.
IBM and several companies that make software for bank operations announced recently that they have developed or are developing an image capability for various bank operations, particularly in small and medium-size institutions.
Software Alliances
IBM already has partnerships with several banking software companies that have integrated its ImagePlus system with their products, including systems for mortgage loan processing, trade finance, and corporate banking.
Among the recent new products is an image-enhanced mortgage loan system from Stockholder System Inc. The software, called Mortracs, is a loan production system that runs on IBM's AS/400 midrange computer. It does loan data entry, automatic rate calculations, closing, warehousing, and automatic generation of all mortgage documents and management reports.
Enhancing Mortracs
Stockholders Systems and IBM have embedded ImagePlus in the Mortracs software so that documents can be electronically scanned and the image, rather than the paper, can be moved about. The image capability eliminates the need for physical handling of mortgage files. Images of mortgage documents can be retrieved, filed, or manipulated on-line by a number of users at once.
The system is being tested by Colonial Mortgage Co., Montgomery Ala.
Meanwhile, IBM has expanded a partnership with software vendor G. G. Pulley, Albuquerque, N.M., to include development of check image processing capabilities on the AS/400.
Targeting Smaller Banks
IBM and G. G. Pulley jointly market AS/400 software for check sorting, proof-of-deposit tasks, and account reconciliation using IBM's check-processing equipment. The systems are aimed at small and medium-size financial institutions.
IBM's own check image system requires expensive mainframe computers and is aimed at the country's biggest banks.
The two companies now plan to make an AS/400 image-processing system available to community banks. Gary Presser, director of marketing at G.G. Pulley, said the system is being designed, but it is too early to say when it will be available.
