Viewpointe Archive Services LLC says the five banking companies that own it plan to be clearing all their common checks through its massive shared check-image archive within 18 months.
"Our owner customers' goal is to get to 100% image," said Lou Buglioli, a payments industry veteran who took over as chief executive officer last week. "It's a goal that the owner customers have committed to."
Mr. Buglioli also said he hopes other companies will follow their lead. "A lot of banks are looking at what the larger banks are doing and are waiting," he said. "This could be a real shot in the arm, in terms of growth in image sharing and image exchange, for the industry."
Unlike check-image exchange networks, which transmit digital images between banks for settlement, Viewpointe's system enables participating banks to settle checks by granting each other permission to view the images in a shared archive. Since January Viewpointe has cut its prices, opened its services to nonmembers, and landed an additional owner.
The five that now own stakes - JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp., U.S. Bancorp, SunTrust Banks Inc., and Wells Fargo & Co. - clear 2.4 billion to 2.5 billion checks among themselves annually, Mr. Buglioli said.
Six other banking companies also store their checks in the Viewpointe archive: BB&T Corp., First Horizon National Corp., the Harris Bank unit of Bank of Montreal, HSBC Bank USA, National City Corp., and Zions Bancorp.
Mr. Buglioli said those companies are also interested in sharing check images with other Viewpointe members but have not committed to the same timetable. The 11 banking companies settle 4.2 billion to 4.4 billion checks among themselves annually.
Three of the companies are already sharing images within Viewpointe. SunTrust and First Horizon began doing so in December and account for the bulk of the items settled through Viewpointe. Bank of America, which began sharing in July, is still early in its ramp-up.
Mr. Buglioli said image-sharing volume is picking up rapidly. The three banking companies settled 300,000 checks in August through the Viewpointe archive, compared with 60,000 in July.
Viewpointe's marketing director, Jennifer Lucas, said its owners have determined a schedule for settling checks with one another, but she would not provide details.
"Everybody's got their dance card filled," she said. "They know who they're going to share with, and when."
In May, Viewpointe cut its rates and announced that banks that do not store images within its archive could transmit image files to its members through the Viewpointe system for settlement. Synovus Financial Corp., BancorpSouth Inc., and Compass Bancshares Inc. have all said they plan to do so, and Synovus and BancorpSouth also said they want to use Viewpointe to reach Compass.
Though many banks are interested in using image systems to settle checks electronically, the vast majority of checks are still cleared the old way.
Still, executives of Viewpointe's owner banking companies expressed confidence they could fulfill the 18-month plan.
"We're already testing," said Kevin B. Dabney, an executive vice president at Wells Fargo Services Co. of Scottsdale, Ariz., the banking company's technology division. "We're going to be there."
He also said Wells plans to use the SVPCO Image Payments Network, operated by The Clearing House Payments Co. LLC, to send image files to non-Viewpointe banks.
Austin Adams, JPMorgan Chase's chief information officer, and a Viewpointe board member, said "That's our goal, and we're going to work toward it.That time frame was determined after a lot of appropriate discussion, both at the board level and in the operations organizations of our firms. We didn't take that target date lightly."
He acknowledged that outside factors could affect that plan, such as a major acquisition. For example, he said that Bank One Corp.'s initial image-exchange effort with KeyCorp over the SVPCO network was delayed after it was acquired by JPMorgan Chase.
Richard Winston, a partner in the financial services group at the New York consulting firm Accenture Ltd., said Viewpointe's goal is worthwhile but will be difficult to reach. He said the archive company "lost a little momentum" during the management change.
"I think 18 months is aggressive. I think 24 months is realistic," he said.
George Thomas, an executive vice president at The Clearing House, was skeptical that Viewpointe could meet its goal. "They're going from zero to 100 in 18 months. It's going to be quite a feat."
Mr. Buglioli is Viewpointe's third CEO this year. John G. Lettko, who had been its chairman and CEO since its inception in November 2000, left in February, the month after Wells bought in.
Officials said at the time that Viewpointe was shifting its goals, and that Mr. Lettko's entrepreneurial strengths no longer matched its needs. For example, Viewpointe had been on track for an initial public offering, but its owners now plan for it to remain an industry-owned utility.
Mr. Buglioli succeeded A. Jerry Chambers, Viewpointe's chief administrative officer, who became its interim chief executive after Mr. Lettko's departure.
