The Bank is active in the community and participates in Phillips County's economic growth programs. The Helena Branch, working closely with Montana financial institutions, has developed EPIC as a prototype for future electronic check processing within the Federal Reserve System. These services are now available to all financial institutions in Montana. With these imaging services, banks can offer customers the option to have their paper checks truncated at the Federal Reserve Bank Helena Branch where an electronic image is filed. Financial institutions then receive an electronic file with information from the checks to be posted to the customers' accounts.
Banks can offer a monthly statement where check images replace the original checks.
First Security has offered customers a truncated account for several years now. The benefit of the EPIC image library is that now the bank can retrieve check images for their customers within a matter of minutes. Another benefit is that any truncated checks that may be causing an overdraft can be looked at before decisions need to be made. According to DeVries, First Security has also been processing by MICR presentment for several years. Being in a remote location, the MICR presentment speeds up the processing significantly.