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Sovereign: Instant Access Paying Off NetBank Offers Free Overnight Courier Canandaigua Using Wasau Software
Sovereign: Instant Access Paying Off
Sovereign Bank says providing commercial borrowers with instant access to their credit accounts is helping it strengthen lending relationships and generate new business.
"Customers today, especially on the commercial side, really want access to information," said Joseph P. Campanelli, the president and chief operating officer of the Sovereign Bancorp Inc. unit's New England division. "They want to know what's going on, on a real-time basis."
For example, he said, automotive floor-plan financing - where the bank provides loans on the vehicles in a dealer's inventory - has become increasingly complex in recent years because of dealership consolidation.
It is not unusual for Sovereign Bank, whose parent company is based in Philadelphia, to provide a $20 million line of credit to a single dealer operating six or seven franchises, Mr. Campanelli said in an interview. "It's gone through a consolidation that is very similar to banking."
Sovereign developed an online lending system with Automated Financial Systems Inc. of Exton, Pa., which had been providing it with an outsourced loan origination and servicing system.
The system gives customers access to more detailed financial reporting that can allow dealers to evaluate, for example, the gross profit on each vehicle sold, Mr. Campanelli said. "You want to have that level of detail for them."
Sovereign is considering wider use of the AFS system, including licensing it to other banks. Mr. Campanelli said he wants to use it to improve the bank's risk management and expand its loan portfolio.
Automated Financial's president, John Shain, said his customers "can customize the software to their unique business model, which gives them much more flexibility in sales and service." 
NetBank Offers Free Overnight Courier
NetBank Inc. is offering free overnight United Parcel Service Inc. delivery for deposits and payments.
The QuickPost service, an-nounced Tuesday, is offered by NetBank's Financial Technologies Inc. unit and is being marketed to other banks as well, though NetBank is the only customer using it now.
It enables retail, small-business, and mortgage customers to send deposits for free from any of United Parcel's 3,800 "UPS Store" locations nationwide.
"NetBank is really as easy to use as a community bank, in terms of getting your deposits to post quickly," said Tom Cable, Financial Technologies' president and the former chief information officer of NetBank, in an interview.
He noted that 72% of U.S. residents live within five miles of a UPS Store. United Parcel is based in Atlanta and NetBank in Alpharetta, Ga.
Because NetBank is an Internet bank, services that provide customers with easy access to their accounts are considered critical.
E-Trade Financial Corp. of New York has said using a courier company would be too expensive. But NetBank is not the first Internet bank to offer such a service. Bancorp Bank of Wilmington, Del., also lets its customers ship deposits overnight for free from UPS Stores - and, unlike NetBank, from those of United Parcel's Mail Boxes Etc. Inc. as well.
Mr. Cable said the NetBank subsidiary overcame the cost barrier by shipping deposits only at the end of the day, in a single package, rather than individually. "The aggregation model is something new, and we think there's going to be a lot of economy of scale," he said.
The company has secured an exclusive arrangement with UPS and has also filed a patent on the aggregation concept.
Financial Technologies currently receives 400 packages a day, Mr. Cable said, about 1,000 total deposits. The program began at UPS' West Coast stores in January and gradually moved east. It was in place at all UPS locations by March 15. Deposits are posted to NetBank accounts the day after the customer drops off the package at a UPS Store.
Canandaigua Using Wasau Software
Canandaigua National Bank and Trust has begun transmitting electronic check images to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York using software from Wausau Financial Systems Inc. of Mosinee, Wis.
Wasau announced Tuesday that the bank, a unit of $965 million-asset Canandaigua National Corp. of Canandaigua, N.Y., is using its Optima3 software suite to transmit the image files.
Sandy Roberts, a senior vice president at the bank, said in Wasau's press release, "Our customers will also benefit through productivity and efficiencies gained."
The FedForward service was introduced in October. Check images transmitted to one Fed branch are forwarded to others around the country, printed out as image replacement documents, and delivered to the paying bank for settlement.
