Headlines:
SunTrust: High Hopes for Remote Capture
SunTrust Banks Inc. of Atlanta expects the remote capture deposit service it is preparing to offer its corporate customers to generate lots of volume quickly.
"We are getting tremendous inquiries," Lee Crocker, a senior vice president at SunTrust, said in an interview last week. "We will have the capacity very quickly to deploy up to 1,000 customers."
SunTrust plans to begin a pilot test by July in which five to 10 customers would convert checks into digital images and transmit them to SunTrust for deposit. It is targeting small and midsize businesses that do not have a lockbox facility, he said.
The service will use remote capture software from Alogent Corp. of Atlanta, the same vendor that provided SunTrust's internal image processing technology.
Paul Citarella, the executive vice president of sales and marketing at Alogent, said 90% of SunTrust's customers will probably use a "thin client" model, in which most of the software resides on SunTrust's systems; customers will scan the check at their site and transmit it to SunTrust, where the image will be assessed for quality and then processed.
Most remote capture applications put the software on customers' computers, but Mr. Citarella said that housing it on the bank's systems will make it easier for SunTrust to upgrade the software without requiring every user to install a new package.
SunTrust will initially receive the images and print them as image replacement documents, but Mr. Crocker said that by yearend it hopes to be able to forward the images to an exchange network.
Mr. Crocker said SunTrust's image-exchange experience has gone well so far. In December it and First Horizon National Corp. of Memphis became the first two banking companies to settle payments through the shared archive operated by Viewpointe Archive Services LLC of Charlotte.
At the program's peak, SunTrust and First Horizon exchanged 1,500 to 1,600 items a day, but the average daily volume has been 400 to 500, Mr. Crocker said.
SunTrust has been moving slowly on that program, in part because of the October acquisition of National Commerce Financial Corp. of Memphis, he said. That program's volume will start rising "very quickly in the next few weeks."
N.Y. Community in Online Software Pact
New York Community Bank has agreed to use an online banking software suite and other products and services from Online Resources Corp. of Chantilly, Va.
Online Resources said Monday that the subsidiary of the $25 billion-asset New York Community Bancorp Inc. of Westbury has signed a five-year contract to use the Money HQ software suite, which has financial account aggregation, fund transfers, alerts, online bill presentment, and other features. The thrift will also use Online Resources' services for its call center and marketing programs.
"With tight integration of online banking, bill payment and other services, all backed by robust marketing and customer service, we believe we can significantly raise the value of our Internet channel," Barbara Ann Tosi-Renna, New York Community Bank's first senior vice president, said in an Online Resources press release.
The thrift will roll out the services in July and begin converting online banking customers in August from its mynycb.com Web site to a new site, nycbdirect.com.
