Vista, Calif. Jan. 6, 2010 Bluepoint Solutions, a 2010 CUNA Tech Council “Best of Show” winner, and provider of remote deposit capture, item processing and enterprise content management solutions for financial institutions, announced that New Mexico Educators Federal Credit Union, with headquarters in Albuquerque, has selected Bluepoint”s comprehensive line of ImagePoint products for in-house item capture and processing. New Mexico Educators FCU joins a growing number of institutions that will move item processing from a third-party outsourcer to an in-house environment.

With over 125,000 members and approximately $1 billion in assets, New Mexico Educators FCU is the largest credit union in the state of New Mexico serving members of educational as well as health care organizations throughout the state with 16 branches. The credit union processes 18,000 items daily, including inclearings and returns.

New Mexico Educators FCU had already been using Bluepoint’s branch and home capture solutions that it had purchased from Southwest Corporate (now Southwest Bridge) Federal Credit Union. Bluepoint provided the credit union with a no-cost transfer of its ImagePoint Branch and QwikDeposit Home software licenses so that both will now be supported directly by Bluepoint. The ImagePoint platform, including all points of capture, provides an enterprise-wide, paperless solution that automates the processing, archival and research of check images.

“We had considered other outsource providers for our check processing. But with Bluepoint, we realized that managing check processing in-house would be  more efficient and more cost-effective. Plus, Bluepoint’s Transition Program allowed us to take advantage of the branch and home capture licenses we already had, while maintaining the continuity of service to our members,” said Tom Hagan, SVP of support services at New Mexico Educators FCU.

“Bringing item processing in-house allows credit unions, like New Mexico Educators FCU, to gain considerable control and streamline operations, while saving time and resources. With Bluepoint’s comprehensive solutions, the credit union can make exponential gains in efficiency with a single, modern technology platform that handles everything from the initial point of capture, to image exchange with the Fed, to long-term archival,” said Bluepoint’s CEO and Founder, Hal Tilbury.

Vista, Calif. Nov. 18, 2010  Bluepoint Solutions, winner of the 2010 CUNA Tech Council “Best of Show” award, and provider of Check 21, remote deposit capture, item processing and enterprise content management solutions for financial institutions, announced the immediate availability of a transition program for natural person credit unions that have branch capture software licenses purchased through Western Bridge Corporate Credit Union (WesCorp) and Southwest Corporate Federal Credit Union. The provider will honor existing licenses and is offering a complimentary upgrade to the most recent version of its ImagePoint Branch application when the credit union initiates a direct support contract with Bluepoint.

Bluepoint’s CEO and Founder, Hal Tilbury, said, “More than 1,000 credit unions are currently running Bluepoint’s branch capture solution through WesCorp and Southwest. The goal of the program is to allow these credit unions to continue using our solution that they know and trust without having to retrain their employees or make an additional financial investment. We are taking the lead from the NCUA Corporate System Resolution Plan and doing whatever we can to guarantee the continuity of payment services to credit unions and members. This is one way we can demonstrate our long-term commitment to the credit union movement.”

According to the NCUA, the first goal of its stabilization strategy is to prevent interruption of payment services to credit unions and the 90 million credit union consumers. Credit unions currently using branch capture solutions purchased from a corporate credit union can immediately transfer those licenses to Bluepoint with no service interruption or additional cost incurred.

Tilbury continued, “Credit unions have a lot of choices for their check capture technology and processing solutions.  We want them to know that Bluepoint will continue to work with them as they explore the best choices for their members.”

More information on the transition program can be found by visiting http://www.bluepointsolutions.com/transition.

Vista, Calif. Feb. 18, 2010. Bluepoint Solutions, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and leading innovator in remote deposit capture (RDC), image-based item processing and enterprise content management software technology for financial institutions, today announced the results of its 2009 Remote Deposit Capture for Credit Union’s survey. Bluepoint surveyed a random sampling of credit unions with assets ranging from $100 million to $1 billion to evaluate which remote capture point(s) they were currently using and/or future plans for leveraging the technology. More than 200 credit unions participated in the survey.

According to responses, 52 percent of participants indicated their credit union currently has at least one type of remote capture solution implemented. Out of those respondents, 63 percent have instituted a branch capture platform, 20 percent rely on teller capture solutions, nine percent have an ATM capture solution, four percent offer merchant capture and another four percent offer home or member capture.

Remote Deposit Capture Deployment

CEO and Founder, Hal Tilbury, said, “Credit unions are only now beginning to seriously embrace remote deposit capture.  As credit union executives become more aware of the cost, time and resource savings this technology can produce, adoption rates will accelerate dramatically until remote deposit capture is as common as online banking or debit cards.”

Respondents indicated a high interest in home capture as a valuable service for their members. When asked about future plans for implementing home capture, 42 percent of respondents indicated they currently had initiatives in place and another 46 percent responded they were currently exploring the service.

Senior Analyst for Celent, Bob Meara, said, “Branch capture’s swift adoption was driven by a compelling and urgent need to address the rising cost of processing paper. That same sense of urgency does not surround home capture. Member demand will eventually lead to widespread adoption, however, as awareness of home capture grows.”
“I’m not surprised to see this trend,” continued Tilbury. “In our society, consumers are used to banking anytime, anywhere. The convenience of making deposits from home creates loyalty from existing members and will attract new members.”

During the 2009 BAI Retail Delivery Conference and Expo. the debate between branch capture and teller capture continued. Bluepoint Solutions’ Chief Marketing Officer, Dick Drew, sat down with Ed McLaughlin to discuss his perspective on the issue. According to Drew, the total branch experience must be considered, and a paperless branch will require “the re-thinking of workflows.” To read the rest of the article, click here.

by Hal Tilbury, Bluepoint Solutions

Most financial industry veterans would agree that remote deposit capture (RDC) is a game-changing development that lowered the cost of item processing. However, as the industry approaches the six-year anniversary of the passage of the Check 21 legislation, many banks still lack a sophisticated capture strategy. In fact, it was estimated at the 2009 BAI Remote Deposit Capture Summit that only 60 percent of all financial institutions have deployed branch capture technologies, and the number is substantially less for teller capture.

By the end of 2009, the Federal Reserve will have closed all but one of its paper-processing facilities, creating an imperative for banks to focus on branch or teller capture strategy before costs go up dramatically. Best practices in payments, supported by impressive ROI experiences from early-adopter installations, dictate that the most efficient mode of branch capture should be conducted at the earliest point of presentment possible: the teller line.

While most institutions recognize the workflow efficiencies of capturing items at the teller station, they discount this option because they think it is too expensive and slow. The industry has been led to believe, often by first-generation capture technology providers, that a single branch capture solution is the best strategy.

Teller capture systems provide a more efficient check processing transaction, freeing up a substantial amount of time for additional teller activity. Studies have proven that the time for standard teller capture transactions is not significantly greater, as no time is spent during any part of the workday closing out and entering batch information. Tellers no longer have to wait in line for other tellers to finish before they can scan their items. Because the tellers are up to date throughout the day, day-end processing becomes a thing of the past.

An early adopter of the teller capture technology, Grow Financial Federal Credit Union in Tampa, found the process added merely seconds to the transaction, and eliminated the need to do batch scanning at the end of the day. The time needed to balance at the end of the day fell from 15 minutes to five minutes.

Greater return on investment and increased operational efficiency is also achieved with teller capture solutions. The equipment and software cost for a branch is typically no less than the cost of licenses and scanners for about four tellers. In previous payments strategies, tellers had to leave the workstation to scan each batch. If tellers performed their scanning at the end of the day, queuing problems usually resulted. Teller capture solutions require a check scanner for each teller, which means that tellers never find themselves waiting for access to a scanner. Training sessions are also expedient and straightforward. All tellers in a branch can be fully trained in half a day.

An example of an almost immediate return on investment is how Grow Financial invested $857,000 in teller capture software and hardware, which included substitute check printing, 130 computers, the Primary Payment System and system maintenance. Grow Financial was able to eliminate three proofing machines and redeploy two full-time employees.

The system also strengthens fraud detection efforts, since the process involves intensive analysis of red flags. If a check presented at the teller line contains non-negotiable items, such as a missing signature, a discrepancy between the courtesy and legal amounts, or fraudulent information in the routing and transit line, it is addressed at that very moment. Scanning the check at the point-of-presentment also allows bank personnel to compare it to both internal and third party real-time fraud detection databases. This practice guarantees fraud reduction at the first point of capture and allows more items to be passed to the database, reducing the overall occurrences of fraud. Some of the current day fraud detection databases are delivering reductions in fraud of up to 90 percent. These results are only available if the items are scanned at the teller workstation.

The adoption of modern RDC solutions needs to increase if banks are to realize the substantial cost reductions that Check21 can deliver. In making the move to RDC it is critical that banks keep an open mind and seriously consider item capture at the teller workstation. For those banks still in the decision mode, it is not too late to select the superior and proven choice of teller capture. Those that do will almost certainly reduce their operational costs and fraud while improving customer service.