Synergize for Optimal Payment Processing

By Tracy Dalton

Outsourcing Product Manager

Hybrid:  Something that is powered by more than one source of power.  That is a pretty powerful statement when talking about product and service offerings for financial institutions (FIs)!  Payment processing has been around forever, at least throughout most of our lifetimes, and Outsourcing has been mainstream for nearly as long.  Each has had its waves, but now is the time to think about them together, living side-by-side and having the control of taking the pieces and parts to create a best-in- breed offering.  According to Aite Group, more than 60% of corporations are not fully satisfied with their receivables processor and would rather have a financial institution handle this aspect of their business. That is great news, corporates TRUST their FI’s!  But many FIs have current solutions that don’t meet all the new needs of these potential corporate clients, nor do they have the capital to invest in building out a complete solution. 

If you want to expand into other geographical areas or enter into new vertical markets such as Healthcare or Property Management and onboard new end corproate customers but don’t want to incur the expense of building out a new facilility or buying new or upgrading your software or staff for these new lines of business, a solution exists and is in play today.  By taking a hybrid approach, a blended style of outsourcing, financial institutions have more options than ever to consider.  

You have the ability to decide what you want to remain in control of and what you want a partner to help you with, and more importantly help you generate recurring revenue streams in several ways. 

1. Enter into new vertical markets such as healthcare and property management;

2. Expand their geographical footprint through a unique nationwide capture network that includes more than 30 sites within 150 miles of 80 percent of the U.S. population; and

3. Offer corporate customers a true integrated receivables solution that aggregates, automates and accelerates the receivables processing cycle. 

By simply adding on to your existing receivables processing solution, you have created a hybrid payments offering that provides a path to obtain new customers, add additional valued services to your current treasury services offerings and ultimately realize proven results, such as satisfied customers, revenue growth and a happy CFO!

WAUSAU Financial Systems is partnering with industry analysts such as Celent, Aite Group, and Garrett Consulting, along with your peers, such as Eastern Bank and Sandy Spring Bank, on a four-part summer webinar series focused on Hybrid outsourcing solutions.  Hear first-hand how your financial institution can grow market share without the expense of adding additional locations, onboarding new corporate customers and providing additional receivables data, all while generating recurring revenue.  That’s music to any CFO’s ears. 

To learn more, click on the links below and reserve your spot today!

June 19^th - Hybrid Outsourcing with Eastern Bank

June 28^th - Integrated Receivables for Financial Institutions

July 11^th - Healthcare Payment Processing

July 25^th - Expanding Geographic Footprint

8 Strategies for Winning in the SMB Market: Maximizing the $700 Million Opportunity

By Jason Olson
RDC Product Manager

As financial institutions search for revenue streams to replace shrinking margins and fees lost to regulations, they are discovering that small and medium-sized businesses (SMB) offer a tantalizing opportunity.  But attracting SMB customers has been easier said than done for most financial institutions.

A case in point is the weak adoption of remote deposit capture (RDC) among SMBs. 

Desperate for ways to save time and improve operating efficiency, the SMB market is a prime candidate for the technology.  Indeed, 43 percent of small businesses surveyed by Aite Group in 2011 said they would consider using RDC, while 26 percent stated they might consider using the technology.  

Yet financial institutions are struggling with how best to market the technology effectively to SMBs.  Although more than 50 percent of U.S. financial institutions now offer RDC, less than 5 percent of small businesses have adopted the technology.  Not surprisingly, results of a survey of the top 50 U.S. financial institutions conducted by Aite Group finds that 73 percent of respondents describe their bank’s success with small business RDC adoption as falling below expectations.

With the SMB market representing such a lucrative source of revenue, $700 million in fact according to Aite, banks can’t afford moderate-at-best results.  Moreover, 20 percent of small businesses say they are likely to look for a new bank in the next year.  This means that there’s no time to spare.  To help banks turn the tide, here are eight strategies for overcoming the top obstacles to getting small businesses to adopt RDC:

1. Focus on staff and customer education: Educate employees on RDC and how to sell RDC to SMBs.  For example, branch managers and account officers need to be able to present the RDC business case.  .  Additionally, associates in each branch should understand what RDC is, what the benefits are (e.g. extended deposit windows) and which customers should be approached.  They should also be able to demo the solution to any interested SMB and explain how easy it is to get started.
2. Build awareness: Develop a multichannel marketing plan for informing customers about RDC.  Financial institutions should begin by targeting SMB customers that tend to deposit the largest number of checks and expand from there.  Phone calls, lunch-and-learn sessions, and in-person demonstrations are just a few of the ways a financial institution can begin to inform their customer and prospect base about the benefits of RDC.  To assist with this program, banks should make use of the tools available for educating small businesses on RDC offered by solutions providers.
3. Streamline enrollment: Banks should deploy an intuitive online enrollment form to help automate the setup of new SMB customers.  Further, the on-boarding process should be fast and easy.
4. Automate training: Banks should leverage the user training guides, videos, webinars and online tools available to help SMBs become self-sufficient with the technology on their own time.
5. Develop SMB business risk policies: Banks should establish a risk and management policy specifically for SMB customers, as well as an approval and escalation protocol to review and approve customer applications.
6. Automate risk monitoring: Banks should use automated risk monitoring tools that flag potential risks and provide operators the ability to review and make decisions on transactions the day they are captured.
7. Capture more than checks: Banks should look for RDC solutions that can process more than just checks (e.g. remittance payments, envelopes, coupons, full-page documents, Automated Clearing House and card transactions).  
8. Offer a package deal: Banks should offer SMBs a truly turnkey, bundled offering (including maintenance fees, customer support, end-user training, scanner deployment, and multiple low cost scanner options) for one monthly fee.  SMB customers don’t want to receive complicated invoices with lots of line items.

The upside of weak RDC adoption among SMBs is that the market remains untapped for banks searching for new revenue streams.  The eight strategies above not only will help banks succeed in the market, but also serve as a foundation for their other SMB initiatives.

Is Your Mobile Banking App Missing the Key Ingredient?

By Sara Zenner
Marketing Campaign Manager, Strategic Solutions

Javelin Strategy & Research reports that 92% of the top 25 banks are now offering mobile banking. By 2016, more than 50% of consumers are expected to become mobile bankers. So, what’s the importance of mobile and what do banks hope to get out of it?

The survey of the American Banker Executive Forum found that 87% of the banks they surveyed developed mobile apps in the hope of strengthening customer ties, while 71% felt competitive pressure pushed them to do it. I do believe that a good mobile app can provide the stickiness banks are looking for, but to achieve that, I learned that they must have the “recipe” perfected.

I decided to take a deep dive into the reviews of six FI mobile apps: Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Chase, Citibank, US Bank and USAA because I was curious to know what consumers out there were talking about. What I found out was quite interesting, and my research uncovered something I wasn’t expecting. Over 20% of the reviews that were written so far in 2012 contained mentions of mobile deposit. If you’re a financial institution that is hoping to strengthen customer ties with your mobile app, have you been reading your reviews? If not, you should be. It could be the difference between retaining and losing your customers. Here are the top 5 things I learned from my research:

1. If you have a mobile app, consumers expect that it includes remote deposit capture.

The cat is out of the bag on mobile RDC. Your customers are talking to your competition’s customers. They are sharing apps with one another and they are well aware if the bank down the street is offering something that you’re not.

In fact, one customer described their bank as being archaic for not offering “photo deposit,” while another customer who’s been with his bank for 40 years threatened to move his accounts, which he describes as “considerable,” to another bank if the service wasn’t offered to him soon. You wouldn’t believe the number of consumers who downloaded their banks mobile app JUST for mobile deposit functionality. For example, see the review below:

• “Please give us access to scanning/depositing checks with this app! It’s really annoying having to drive all the way to an ATM just to deposit a check when my iPhone could easily do it from home or wherever! Because this app does NOT let us deposit checks, I give it ONE star.”

2. If you’re just rolling out mobile RDC, have a strategic plan and follow it, with customers in mind.
This is a hot topic for banks planning to implement mobile RDC in the next few months. Everyone wants their roll out to be a success. For that reason, some banks have decided to roll it out gradually, allowing certain groups of customers to participate in a beta for the product. As I said before, people talk. One customer was lucky enough to have mobile RDC functionality through the beta, while his daughter, who lived a state away, was still waiting for her mobile app to include the service. Let’s just say she was getting impatient. See the review below:

• “The last update (a number of months ago) revealed that some lucky users were beta testing Mobile Check Deposit. I am still waiting for this feature and starting to get impatient.”

Bottom line, patience is definitely a virtue these days and there isn’t much of it. Don’t market the feature too early if you’re not ready to deliver to ALL your customers! For example, see the review below:

• “What is the delay with mobile check deposit? You promised it would be in an update by the end of 2011. Please keep customers informed."

3.  If you’ve already rolled out mobile RDC, pay attention to what customers are saying and continue to test!

I saw quite the pattern of customers who had mobile RDC functionality and were happy with it. Then the bank rolled out the next version and all of a sudden the app was failing left and right. The biggest problems I’ve read have to do with customers who have an iPhone 4s. Many of the apps seem to be failing when downloaded on this particular phone. For example, see the review below:

• “What a worthless app! I have now spent an hour attempting to take a picture of a check for deposit that the app keeps rejecting! I’m using an iPhone 4s with an 8 mp cam. The images can’t be any clearer. Fix your app! Read the reviews. It’s broken. Time to go to the bank and wait in a long line to deposit my check.”

Don’t forget to test and test again before releasing a new version. Also, when you release a new version, make sure your customer support is well informed to take care of customers who may be running into issues.

4. You may want to consider taking another look at the limits and restrictions you’re setting around mobile RDC.

I understand that everyone wants to be cautious when rolling out mobile RDC. The industry experienced the same thing back in the infancy of merchant RDC. Setting too strict of limitations around who can deposit checks could be hurting you, however. You don’t want your customers to feel like you don’t trust them. One review read:

• “I would give a perfect review for this app but I dislike how the bank won’t let me use mobile deposit because I don’t have a loan or credit card with them. I have checking, savings and insurance with them. What more do I need to show them that I am trustworthy enough for it?”

Other customers feel as if the daily deposit limits set by their banks are too low. Make sure the limits you’re setting are reasonable. To give you an idea of what I mean, see the review below:

• “Only allows mobile deposit of $1,000 a day?! Come on, man. If you have an iPhone, wouldn’t you think your paycheck might be more than $1,000?

5. For those of you who have included RDC in your mobile app, and everything is in working order, it sounds like your customers couldn’t be happier.

If you’re still in doubt of whether or not you should roll out mobile RDC, just go for it. One reviewer commented that customers have been waiting for years for this feature. Don’t let them down now. Mobile RDC can position you for considerable growth, but if you wait too long you could risk losing customers to the bank down the street that decided to jump in with both feet. For those banks who have done just that, take a look at the reviews below:

• “The app is solid. The best feature being the mobile check deposit. This has made my financial life so much easier.”
• “The ability to make deposits with the iPhone is ridiculously convenient.”
• “I LOVE LOVE LOVE this app!! The deposit function is priceless and SO efficient! Immediately my deposit is in, and the time for it to be available is shortly thereafter.”
• “This app is great, I have everything at my fingertips. Mobile deposits are also convenient. I can deposit a check any time of the day or night.”
• “Now this just made my day!! I’ve had a $15 check in my purse for almost 3 months now because it’s inconvenient to make a special trip to the bank for such a small amount. I am still amazed that I was able to deposit a photo of the check which posted immediately. Instructions were very easy to follow.”
• My wife loves mobile deposits. When my wife loves something, you know it is awesome!
• “Great app. Saves so much time, and the mobile deposit makes it a winner.”

I invite you to go out and read the reviews yourself. While this project was quite entertaining to say the least, I came away learning more than I expected about your customers and what they’re looking for. The pool of consumers that haven’t heard of mobile RDC is growing smaller by the minute. Customers want mobile RDC. They expect it. As a financial institution you certainly don’t want, or can afford, reviews like this one below:

• “I’m switching banks today because I can’t make a simple check deposit thru here. It’s 2012 and you still haven’t installed the check deposit feature.”

Listen to your customers, be sensitive to their needs when it comes to mobile apps and never forget the key ingredient, Remote Deposit Capture.

Are Stranded Remittance Payments Making Your CFO’s Wallet Spin?

By Lisa Dmytro
Marketing Campaign Manager, Corporate Solutions

When insurance companies look at the cost of processing customer payments for policies, they often forget to look at the “hidden” costs of receivables processing.  When I talk about the “hidden” costs, the one that comes to mind is the cost of processing payments from remote office/agent locations.

Agents often get caught up in the day-to-day aspects of working with customers to open new policies, modify existing ones, attract new customers, and keep up with all the necessary paperwork.  Part of that necessary paperwork is customer payments in the form of paper checks for policies.  More often than not, agents have every intention of sending their customer payments to the central office for processing, but it tends to take a back seat to closing new business and providing superior customer service.  With many insurance companies having several hundreds or thousands of agents in their network, the costs can add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.

When you factor in payment float time (the amount of time between when an individual writes and submits a check as a payment and when the individual’s bank receives the instruction to move funds from the account), the delays can dramatically impact an insurance organization’s daily investible cash, causing a lack of visibility into receivables data.

The good news is that there is a solution to reduce and even eliminate payment float from remote agent locations – remote deposit capture (RDC). Remote deposit capture allows remote agents to scan checks at their location and send the images to the central office for payment processing. This reduces payment float time and eliminates the need to overnight payments, which can easily add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars a year if payments are mailed on a daily basis.  

Remote Deposit Capture also allows insurers to consolidate banking relationships. No longer does a corporation need to have the local bank around the corner to make check deposits. With RDC, the geographic “footprint” for depository relationships increases so insurers are free to select which financial institution(s) they want to send their deposits to.

Paper-based payments are not going away. Remote deposit capture provides a more cost- effective way of processing payments from remote agents rather than relying on agents to consistently mail in checks.  Not to mention, with the USPS reducing and eliminating some mail services, the need to receive payments from remote agents should be top of mind for insurers.  And with the ability to capture ACH and Credit Card payments through Remote Deposit Capture, the opportunity to accelerate premium payments should be music to a CFO’s ears!

Before the implementation of the Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act (Check 21), the average float time was two to four days.  How long are you waiting? What is your insurance company doing to ensure payments from remote agent offices are captured and deposited in a timely manner?

To join us for our upcoming webinar, "Reduce the Hidden Costs of Processing Customer Payments" on March 20th at 1:00pm CDT, please click here.

Enterprise Content Management - and Rental Cars

By Kevin Ledgister
ECM Senior Sales Engineer

Recently, I was on a business trip and was picked up by a fellow associate in a very basic rental car. The vehicle had no power windows, no power locks, and no remote trunk release. But the one redeeming feature it did have was an iPod™ auxiliary port.

The driver mused that this vehicle was probably intended for a younger market where they would care more about music than power features, but for two business people on a trip, the missing features were painful and inconvenient. The driver constantly needed to get out of the car to open the trunk for me. Or as a courtesy, he would unlock my door first before going around to manually unlock his door to get in the car.

This experience with the bare-bones rental car with one cool feature reminded my traveling companion and I of some of the recent interactions that we have had with prospects. Some of these prospects were looking at competing solutions that were obviously not mature or ready to deliver basic functionality on a daily basis. These prospects would save money in the short run, but suffer many inconveniences and hidden costs.

First of all, many of the solutions required third-party components and custom development just to match (at least on paper) the functionality of our Enterprise Content Management offering right off the shelf. We would have hated to be those prospects during upgrades.

Worse yet, the core of those solutions were not designed to manage the scale or volume required for the business applications. Nor did the software include the sophisticated controls for business rules that are required in many corporate and financial environments. We knew that the day-to-day requirements of end-users would not be met because some of the most minor changes would require development effort.

We also knew that once you have hundreds of thousands of documents in the systems they were considering, search (even with meta tags) was going to be difficult, managing all that data and retention would be a struggle, and integrating to their line-of-business applications would be difficult, if not impossible.

To top if off, these solutions could not really achieve the prospects’ desired goal of becoming paperless. It was like the rental car company passing our low-end vehicle as a suitable tool for a business traveler. For a young couple on a weekend jaunt – yes; for executive travel – absolutely not.

The low cost of any solution is quickly forgotten when you have to endure the pain of a difficult day-in, day-out existence. When we added up the numbers and the hard dollar benefits of going paperless, suddenly the cheaper solution ended up costing a whole lot more and those few shiny features weren’t so shiny anymore.

And for the record, we never used the iPod™ port on the rental car either.

The One Key Critical Component for ECM Success

By Kevin Ledgister
ECM Senior Sales Engineer

On a recent conference call, a senior executive for one of our customers shared with a prospective customer some tips for success. Those tips were worth their weight in gold as this customer had already gone through many of the growing pains of going paperless.

One tip stood out head-and-shoulders above the others that it bears sharing to all of our current and prospective customers - and that tip is:

Get your business stakeholders involved!

This was directed at the Information Technology (IT) group that usually owns the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solution. This advice goes beyond having a one-hour meeting with them to discuss their basic business needs because, in the end, the solution will be inadequate and if you do not get user acceptance; the project risks being deemed a failure even though the technology possesses the functionality needed for success.

So here are my top 3 reasons why IT should get the business stakeholders involved:

1. It is highly likely that you do not understand the business process requirements. For certain, you may understand their general process and that they need to retrieve documents based on three different keywords but that is only a basic consideration.
   
   For instance, what if the users need to associate the document with multiple customer transactions? What if the users need to track the status of the document or be able to restrict older versions from front-line staff? What if you need to keep the data on your line-of-business system consistent with the keyword metadata values of the documents stored in your ECM solution? What if users need to use certain annotation and highlights that you have turned off or haven't configured? How is exception work going to be handled?
   
   If you ask the basic questions of "what do you need?" to a business stakeholder without the deeper probing questions, you won't be able to tailor the system to make a big productivity improvement. Instead, you will deploy a system that is in the infancy of ECM capability, or put in all kinds of bells-and-whistles that are of low priority to the users. This just leads to frustration and a lack of cooperation that may be required for future projects.
   
   
2. Getting user buy-in requires more than a shiny new ECM application. You have users and knowledge workers, some with many years of experience that need to buy-into your deployment. Gaining user-acceptance and building relationships through the process of involving of discovery and design is a great way to reduce fears and have the users invest into the solution. It is not unusual for an organization to lose valuable employees because of a platform change, so having feet on the ground to evangelize the new solution can be a huge win. Losing an employee with years of experience means that you lose years of undocumented knowledge.
   
   
3. Your needs and the business needs are different. I have seen IT departments try to build a complicated mousetrap, when a cost-effective off-the-shelf solution could be deployed quicker, faster, with far less spaghetti code and integration. And I have seen IT departments come up with elegant solutions that complement an off-the-shelf solution.
   
   IT is typically concerned with security, scalability, and interoperability while the business units are concerned with ease-of-use, productivity, reporting, and compliance. This is the reason why the very cool things that IT may get excited about from their favorite reps may be almost meaningless to the end user. For instance, you may love the fact that you can remotely monitor an account but the vice president bemoans the lack of real-time reporting that he/she needs to provide on-demand reports to the board.

Having the business users involved will enable you to better perform the balancing act that is required in an ECM or paperless deployment. Because of the nuances of paperless and ECM solutions, it is as much of a craft as it is a science.

Understanding stakeholders' needs clearly will make you the hero of your organization.

Top 5 Reasons to Implement a Paperless Treasury Solution

By Joe Pitzo
Vice President, Paperless Enterprise Solutions

Treasury management is one of the most complex operations in any financial institution, requiring multiple approval layers, paper-intensive documentation and disparate on-boarding procedures. Financial institutions can reap significant benefits by addressing these complex and manual processes, allowing your sales and support teams to be more productive by focusing less on paperwork and more on improving the customer experience and generating revenue.

Here are the top 5 reasons a Paperless Treasury solution should rise to the top of your priority list:

1. Generate More Revenue Faster.  After agreements are signed and setup forms are completed, the work has only just begun.  In a paper-centric world these documents must be transported back to an office where they can be routed to the appropriate internal departments for implementation and filing.  Implementation processes may require efforts from multiple teams and may rely on unreliable/auditable processes like faxing.  Paperless Solutions can allow the submission of documents from iPads and other mobile devices to downstream departments within seconds of the final, electronic signature being captured and ensuring all of those teams receive the data they need to complete implementation processes in parallel with each other.
   
   
2. Customer Convenience & Satisfaction.  Your customers are used to having immediate access to information and services when they need them, regardless of what time it is.  Implementing a Paperless Treasury Solution allows financial institutions to provide more self-service options to their customers. This includes minimizing the amount of information existing customers are required to submit when signing up for additional services.  It also provides the ability to provide customers with real-time updates as implementations are being completed, just like they can track the status of their pizza delivery.
   
   
3. Improved Visibility.  Just as customers want to be kept up-to-date on the status of their projects, it is even more important for a financial institution to be aware of projections and potential bottlenecks so resources can be shifted and accurate forecasting can be completed.
   
   
4. Cost Reduction and Efficiency Gains.  Paper processes have a tendency to generate additional paper in the form of shadow copies and faxes. It is also very easy for paper documents to be misplaced and fall into a “black hole.”  Processes tend to wait for paper, making them tough to monitor without excessive manual, error prone, reporting efforts.  Paperless Solutions remove these missing documents and ensure they move to the appropriate resources within the desired timeframe.  Paperless processing will also give financial institutions the ability to add new volume without adding resources, by eliminating time consuming repetitive, manual steps.
   
   
5. Standardize Processing & Compliance.  Due to the difficult nature of tracking paper it is easy for processes to be unreliable.  Paperless processes leveraging Business Process Management capabilities can help ensure agreements are generated automatically, changes are tracked during contract negotiations, and all documents flow through all processes, as required, in a consistent manor with a full audit trail for auditors to review.  

The Treasury Department is a great start to going paperless for any institution. Once you realize the benefits paperless solutions can provide, you can expand your paperless strategy across the bank:

• Teller or Back Counter Imaging
• New Accounts
• Customer Service
• Lending
• ATM
• Safe Deposit Box Access
• Wealth Management
• Accounts Payable
• Human Resources

Going paperless throughout the bank drives efficiency across the enterprise, improves workflow, enhances customer service and eases the audit process. Isn’t it time you spent less time at the copier and more time with your customers? Think about going paperless and start in Treasury.

Does the Thought of Outsourcing Your Lockbox Give You a Headache?

 

By Tracy Dalton
Product Manager, Outsourcing

Outsourcing – when I say the word you may think of various things – loss of control, something or someone else to manage, offshore, increased costs - oops did I just give you headache?  Take a breath, keep reading, and think about the changes that have occurred in just the last five years. And if you are a financial institution, just think about the last two years.

Financial Institutions are focused on reinventing themselves. Larger institutions are trying to figure out things like Mobile Banking, Social Media, and retaining fee based services, while mid and smaller institutions are entering the market with new ideas on how to capture the local corporate market.

Understandably, wholesale lockbox payments have always been near and dear to the banker, as they are the pulse of deposit revenue. But the mechanics of processing payments may be getting cumbersome in our current environment and may be taking away from strategic initiatives of gaining market share, continued innovation, and growing the  customer base.

When you’re in this type of quandary it’s time to weigh the pros and cons of supporting an in-house remittance lockbox operation verses partnering with a provider. With the call coming from upstairs for decreased operating expenditures, coupled with the ever-present demands of the business to increase cash-flow, financial institutions need a solution that can accomplish a suite of demands:

• increase revenue overall,
• attract new corporate customers,
• embrace new markets,
• meet the demands of existing corporate customers for  customer service,
• and for new innovative solutions that help them create happier clients and ultimately more deposits.

By sticking to your core business of money management, deposit and treasury services, and financial growth, it may be the right time to consider partnering with an outsourced provider to help you with the mechanics of receivables processing.  It actually has many benefits for you and your customers, both existing and new.  Consider some of the value propositions:

Predictable costs – by outsourcing, you let someone else do the heavy lifting and you take advantage of economies of scale. Your partner invests in the brick-and-mortar, software, technology, people, process, and tools that enable you to walk into a fully furnished, brand new home! Sit back and relax.

Accountability – Along with paying for a service, you get the benefit of holding your partner – the expert – accountable for performance, improvements, industry standards, education, and assistance in the growth of your business.  Remember in order for them to be successful, you must be successful. It’s a two-way partnership.

Growth Opportunities – Your outsourcing partner is focused on providing the best service, the best product, and the best solutions. It is their core business, and it’s how they make a living just like you make a living by providing the BEST treasury services.  Your provider will help you do things like enter new vertical markets, enter new geographical markets, and provide you the necessary tools (Mobile, online portals, fully electronic archives, Integrated Receivables, etc.) that will help you outshine your competition.  Your partner absorbs these upfront costs, research, development, market analysis thus eliminating your barriers to entry, while you reap the rewards.

The payments landscape has certainly changed, and we all know that paper payments are decreasing, yet the ones that are left are more complicated and need more attention.  Electronic payments are main-stream and we must address how to settle these efficiently.  Technology seems like it is moving quicker than light, and our new digital generation will continue to make us reach further for new solutions.  There is so much happening so quickly it makes my heart pound just thinking about the next new thing.  

I also believe that having a strong partnership is vital.  We cannot be all things to all people, and it’s not so bad giving up control (former control junkie speaking) when it allows your financial institution to grow and still have all the components you need to thrive in receivables processing.

I hope you don’t need two aspirins, rather now I hope that you have a different perspective on outsourcing.  Don’t think about it as giving up control, but rather gaining control of your destiny and as in your personal life, choose the partners that will grow with you and share your core goals.

Reasons Utilities Should Implement Integrated Receivables Lockbox

by Lisa Dmytro

Faced with more and more industry regulations, and being forced to do more with less, utilities are being challenged to drive receivables processing costs down without impacting customer service.  Factor in the inflexibility and higher costs associated with check-centric or siloed legacy receivables processing solutions, this more than provides enough pressure to keep any utility receivables finance and treasury officer up at night.

Here are reasons why utilities should consider implementing a modern integrated receivables lockbox processing solution that will help them to aggregate disparate payment channels, automate receivables and accelerate the application of cash: 

1. New and emerging payment channels such as mobile, online and automated, including  recurring ACH payments  and walk-in are becoming increasingly popular, especially with the Millennial generation. This generation will continue to demand more convenient payment channels and turn more to electronic channels. How will these newer channels integrate into your payment ecosystem effectively? 
   
   
2. Aging, inflexible legacy systems. Over 33% of utilities still rely on legacy IT systems; resulting in unnecessarily high costs and the inability to work exception items in near real-time.
    
3. Demands for improved customer service.  Gaining access to payments history across all payment channels available through online tools will help resolve customer billing disputes more quickly and efficiently. Automating business rules related to payment activity such as shut-off/reconnect activity within your smart grid/AMA can also save labor cost while reducing negative customer service impact.
   
   
4. Improved cash flow.  Did you know that on average 10% of payments take 3 days or more to process? Getting all payments processed in the same-day has never been more crucial for cash flow and the ability to make sound business decisions. What would you do if your utility could improve daily investible cash by up to 30%? 

Utilities who implement an integrated receivables solution are staying ahead of the changing payments curve, allowing them to maximize investment, preparing for future emerging payment needs, better serving customers and moving money faster.

For more information on WAUSAU’s receivables processing solutions for utilities, click here,
or call (800) 937-0017 ext. 4639.

Mobile and Consumer Remote Deposit Capture: A Consumer’s Perspective

By Sara Zenner

As someone who markets Remote Deposit Capture (RDC) for a living, you can imagine how thrilled I was when my bank began marketing RDC to me! I use the term “marketing” loosely. Actually a new “Make a Deposit” button just popped up in my Internet banking portal one day. It included a short description of RDC and a Coming Soon message that I soon became quite familiar with. I checked back almost every day until I finally realized that “Coming Soon” really meant, “In a Few Months.” An average customer may have assumed they just really wanted to build anticipation, but as a professional in the payments space, I knew they must be having challenges with the implementation itself. They were, nonetheless, ahead of the curve with mobile and consumer RDC. I appreciated that as a customer and so I remained patient.

One day while logging into my online banking to check my balances, I clicked on the button again, and this time it worked! I signed up for the service right away. I was happy they now had consumer capture but it still kept me wanting. Days later they rolled out mobile, and that, my friends, is the day they won me over – well, at least for the moment.

• The due diligence process
  I actually commend the bank for their due diligence beforehand, setting thresholds and deposit limits and putting a plan together for managing risk. Many financial institutions looking to implement consumer and mobile this year are challenged with this due diligence process. Everyone wants to be cautious and “do it right.” While it’s exciting to be the pacesetter, most financial institutions are more comfortable with the “you try it first and I’ll do it better” approach. When our customers get together in a room they love to bounce ideas off of each other and learn best practices around implementing new solutions. And who wouldn’t?
  
  With that in mind, I thought it would helpful to share some of the standards and limits my bank has set around consumer and mobile capture. Implementation shouldn’t be scary. It should be exciting. As long as you partner with an experienced solutions provider and plan out your implementation roadmap, you should have no problem offering this solution to your customers with confidence. They’re going to be excited about it – trust me.
  
  
• Eligibility requirements
  To qualify for RDC, my financial institution required a customer to have direct ownership of a checking or savings account, be in good standing and have no more than two returned deposited items within a 3 month period (this is how they decided which customers received the new “Make a Deposit” button in their online banking portal).
  
  
• Did they charge for the service?
  Well, of course, and why not? Many banks are fearful of adding fees to their services these days, but when you think about all of the fees within the last year lost to regulations, you need to make up that revenue somehow! The bank began by charging $.75 per item and then it dropped to $.50 maybe a month or two later. They experimented and adjusted, but good for them. Yes, you can charge for mobile and consumer RDC. If it’s a service consumers find convenient, they will pay for it.  I do!
  
  
• Deposit limits
  As a consumer, I have a daily deposit limit of $2,500 and a five-day rolling deposit limit of $5,000. A small business customer has a daily deposit limit of $7,500 and a five-day rolling limit of $15,000.
  
  
• When is the deposit available?
  The bank warns that funds may not be available for immediate withdrawal. Funds need to be processed and collected first. The first $200 is available after the deposit is approved.
  
  
• What do they tell the customer to do with their check after depositing it?
  This was the most awkward part of the whole process for me. The first time I used mobile deposit I struggled with where to put the newly deposited check. I couldn’t destroy it because the funds weren’t yet in my account. Should I hide it? I definitely didn’t want my husband to find it and try depositing it again. What if I lose it? I looked throughout the bank’s mobile app for suggestions on what to do. I wish a notification would have just popped up with some instruction after I submitted my deposit.
  
  I finally found the answer in a FAQ document available on my online banking site. My bank suggests that I retain the check in a secure location (in a safe, under my bed?) for at least seven days in case the check is returned. The check should be destroyed (cross-shred is recommended) no more than 30 days after deposit. So although I struggle with this aspect personally (it’s getting better), hopefully other customers find this part easier than what I did.
  
  
• Avoiding duplicate deposit
  As I continued to read through my FAQ guide, my bank did inform me of my responsibility regarding duplicate items. They suggested I clearly mark the front of the check as deposited electronically. If I would try and deposit the check again, the system would detect the duplicate, however, if I still think the check is not a duplicate, they advised me to go to a branch to make the deposit. I was also reminded that I was responsible for any duplicate items introduced into the check clearing stream.
  
  
• Checking the status of the deposit
  I’m able to check the status of my deposit through email or my online banking portal. After making a deposit I receive two emails: an acknowledgement that the deposit was received (within 5-10 min.) and a notification that the deposit was either approved or declined (there’s a 6 p.m. cut-off Mon.-Fri. so it just depends on when it was deposited). My approval notifications usually arrive within 30 minutes of the deposit.
  
  
• Viewing images of the electronically deposited check
  Images of deposits that have been approved may be requested through the branch or the bank (800) number. Images that have been declined, however, can be viewed through the online banking portal.

Partner with a leader
There are so many more things to consider when implementing mobile and consumer capture, but hopefully this information was helpful. Our RDC experts here at WAUSAU seem to be in constant consultative mode regarding consumer and mobile. That’s okay, that’s what we’re here for. If you’re considering consumer and mobile this year contact us! We carry the most comprehensive RDC suite in the market, complete with risk monitoring functionality so you can roll out mobile and consumer with confidence.

Final thought
The final thought I want to leave you with so your roll out is a successful one. . .educate your staff. If I had one complaint with my bank offering the service, it’s that the staff at the branches aren’t educated about the solution. When I had questions, in person, mind you, I was told to call the bank’s (800) number. Not only should your entire staff be educated, they should be excited about talking to customers about consumer and mobile deposit. Remember, mobile and consumer RDC is not an “if” anymore, it’s a “when,” and the time is now, my friends.