Headlines:
IRDs Under Consideration at Bremer AFS Gets More Business from Corporate CU John H. Harland Co. Names Two Presidents
IRDs Under Consideration at Bremer
For more than two years Bremer Financial Corp. of St. Paul has been transmitting digital check images from more than 100 branches in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and North Dakota to an item processing center, then following up by sending the actual paper items.
And more than six months after the Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act took effect, the $6.2 billion-asset company continues to do it the same way. However, executives say that Bremer's payments council may make a decision in two to three months whether to begin producing image replacement documents to accelerate check clearing.
While many banks are already preparing to settle checks across electronic image-exchange networks, Bremer is biding its time, said Thomas J. Ryan, a vice president at Bremer and its chief information officer.
Bremer installed check scanners at its branches in 2003. That "positions us to move very quickly to an image environment," Mr. Ryan said in an interview Tuesday. "We're waiting for the industry to mature a little bit."
Korwin R. Lockie, a vice president at Bremer and its director of operations, said that Bremer outsources its item processing work to a center in Lake Elmo, Minn., operated by Fidelity Information Services Inc.
Printing out images into IRDs is "fairly expensive," Mr. Lockie said. "We are evaluating whether that makes sense," Mr. Lockie said.
Couriers are expensive as well, though. Bremer uses trucks that run routes among its offices in western North Dakota. The trucks deliver checks to Fargo on the eastern edge of the state; from there they are shipped by air to Lake Elmo.
Couriers also deliver interoffice mail, loan documents, and other materials between offices, Mr. Lockie noted. "We're still in the process of evaluating the use of those couriers in other areas."
Bremer, which is 92% owned by a St. Paul charity, the Otto Bremer Foundation, clears checks with a variety of trading partners. It is a member of the Twin Cities Clearing House Association, and it clears with U.S. Bancorp, Wells Fargo & Co., BancWest Corp., and the Federal Reserve. It is in the early stages of certifying its systems to deliver images to the Fed, but does not participate in any image-exchange networks.
Bremer is also ready to capture images at the teller window.
"Our scanning equipment is on the teller line," Mr. Lockie said, "but in very few cases are we scanning the items as the teller is waiting on the customer."
Instead, "at the teller window they will accumulate the items and they will scan them in batches through the day," Mr. Lockie said. "Our quality of scanning is better when we have a dedicated person."
Tellers' face-to-face work with customers "tends to take their focus away from scanning," Mr. Lockie said. "We've had more issues with scanning in that environment."
AFS Gets More Business from Corporate CU
Corporate America Credit Union of Irondale, Ala., has licensed software from Advanced Financial Solutions Inc. to expand its item processing capabilities.
Corporate America, which serves more than 200 member credit unions in Alabama, said Monday that the AFS software allows the organization to capture check images at individual credit union offices. The images can be forwarded to the Federal Reserve banks, or converted into image replacement documents for returns and forward presentment.
AFS, a unit of Metavante Corp. (which in turn is a unit of the Milwaukee banking company Marshall & Ilsley Corp.), said Corporate America had already been using AFS's imaging software for internal item processing and image warehousing.
Corporate America is also member of the Endpoint Exchange Network, Metavante's image-exchange system. Its member credit unions have been clearing and settling payments through the network for several months, AFS said in a press release.
John H. Harland Co. Names Two Presidents
John H. Harland Co. has a pair of new business unit presidents.
The Atlanta check printing company said Tuesday that Jeff Heggedahl had succeeded John Heald as president of its printed products division.
Mr. Heggedahl is to oversee the integration of Liberty Enterprises Inc., which Harland is buying.
The $160 million deal was announced in May and is set to close this month. It would be Harland's largest acquisition.
Liberty, of Mounds View, Minn., provides checks, marketing services, and banking software, primarily to credit unions.
Harland also has hired Kevin Lee as president of its newly created fraud and payment solutions business unit.
