Its total prime pass processing volume is 25 million items a day. Even though it s the dawn of the digital age, checks will be a critical issue for banks for years, she said. She cited Tower Group research that concluded that check volume would rise slowly for the next three decades before it peaks. In fact, an important driver for change is the need to support the customer s preferred channel, despite limited opportunities to reduce costs in check processing, given the existing linear processing infrastructure, rising fraud, and limits on skilled labor. Paper-based processing is constrained by region, space and time, she said.
Region involves how far the bank can move paper for same-day processing.
Space refers to functions that need to occur during short time periods, requiring that processing be co-located in major cities. Time refers to the fact that old technology with linear process flows could accommodate only one function at a time for any transaction. Imaging overcomes the physical limitations of paper processing by separating the transaction from the paper. It overcomes region limitations by separating capture of an item from the process of validating it. Image attacks the space constraint by reducing the need to co-locate functions such as capture, correction, exception processing and research as well as the need to locate them in major cities where skilled labor is scarce and expensive.