Synovus Financial Corp. of Columbus, Ga., has become the first multibank holding company to link its in-house check image archive with the one used by Viewpointe Archive Services LLC's 11 customer banks.
The $25.1 billion-asset Synovus is the second company to sign up for the Pointe2Pointe service, which lets banks clear checks with Viewpointe members by connecting their image archives with Viewpointe's. Last month Compass Bancshares Inc. of Birmingham, Ala., agreed to use the Charlotte archive company's service.
Bobby Moody, Synovus' senior manager of payment services, said Tuesday that it is in discussions to send and receive images with several Viewpointe banks, which he would not name.
"The discussions are going on, but I don't have commitments," he said.
He projected that it would take 90 to 120 days to set up the connections with Viewpointe. He said he hopes to start testing the system by September and conducting live image exchange by October.
He acknowledged that Synovus is more likely to exchange images with Viewpointe's southeastern participants, such as Bank of America Corp. of Charlotte, First Horizon National Corp. of Memphis, or SunTrust Banks Inc. of Atlanta, than with U.S. Bancorp of Minneapolis or Wells Fargo & Co. of San Francisco, which have no geographical overlap with Synovus.
Though Synovus operates banks under 41 charters in five southeastern states, its check-clearing operation is "very much centralized," Mr. Moody said. "We definitely run the back room as one bank."
Synovus began its conversion to digital check imaging in 2002 and completed it in early 2003. All of Synovus' banks send their customers image statements rather than cancelled checks in the mail. Also, its Day Two operations for returns and adjustments are completely image-enabled, he said.
The conversion will make it easy for Synovus to connect to Viewpointe's system, Mr. Moody said. "We're ready. It's just a matter of getting the plan in place, testing, and implementing. We're positioned to where we can move quickly."
Synovus could use Viewpointe to exchange images with Compass, even though neither of them uses Viewpointe's archive, he said. "We do have some volume with Compass. That certainly is possible. They're on our radar."
Compass did not respond immediately respond to a request for comment.
Jennifer Lucas, Viewpointe's marketing director, said it has the technology to transmit image files between banks that don't use its archive. The archive provider, which is owned by five of the nation's largest banking companies, recently broadened its strategy and is now trying to encourage image-based check clearing throughout the banking industry.
"The thing that takes the most time is all the agreements with the different banks," Ms. Lucas said. To use Viewpointe for image-based clearing, banks must have bilateral agreements with its trading partners. "We're just the matchmaker. The banks are doing all the heavy lifting."
SunTrust and First Horizon are using images in Viewpointe's archive to clear checks, and the majority of Viewpointe's 11 members plan to begin clearing through the archive this year, Ms. Lucas said.
Mr. Moody said Synovus will use a variety of approaches for clearing images. "In the paper world, we have multiple clearing channels. In the electronic arena, we see the same thing happening. This is just another channel that's available to us in the electronic arena."
Since February 2004, Synovus has been part of the Endpoint Exchange Network, which is owned by Marshall & Ilsley Corp.'s Metavante Corp., and Mr. Moody said his company would remain in that network.
"We've been very pleased with the process that Endpoint has in place," he said, though "we're a little disappointed with the volume that we've seen through Endpoint."
The agreement with Viewpointe will provide Synovus a connection "with the big guys who at this point are not involved in the Endpoint Exchange," he said. "Today they do not overlap."
Jacob Jegher, a senior analyst at the Boston research and consulting firm Celent Communications LLC, said it is vital for different image-exchange systems to connect with one another.
"The pace is certainly picking up, but there's still room to grow," Mr. Jegher said. "Check imaging is really going to take off when Viewpointe and SVPCO start communicating." (The two networks have agreed, but not started, to do so.)
SVPCO is an image exchange network operated by Clearing House Payments Co. LLC, a New York company owned by 21 large banking companies.
