Chase has been using i-Vault! for the past two years to store and retrieve bank documents, from statements and tax forms to commercial loan documents. Today, 18 Chase divisions and affiliates, including Chase's credit card company and several external customers, including Toyota Financial Services, the Federal Communications Commission and CNA Insurance, use the service to retrieve about 246,000 images each month.

The system stores images in a computerised warehouse that can be accessed via the Internet using standard Web browsers. The service is designed to cross reference documents, and to index the archive by name, number, subject, date or any other designated field. Close to 14 terabytes of data, which is equivalent to 280 million pages of information, are currently stored in the i-Vault! archive says the bank.

"Chase has established an expertise in image archiving to support our own volume and security needs for cheque storage and retrieval, and we have used this image technology across all of our business lines to streamline operations and improve customer service" says Thomas McGuire, Chase senior vice president.

Chase provides full redundancy and disaster recovery services for i-Vault!, maintaining an archive in Houston, Texas and a backup archive in Wilmington, Delaware. Storage options include direct access computer disk storage, tape or optical disk.

Toyota Financial Services uses i-Vault! to access images of cheques received through the company's US lockbox network. The system provides a single Internet portal to images previously accessed through separate software packages from multiple banks. Decentralised access through the Internet is underway at 33 of Toyota's branch offices.

"Automating access to cheque images enables us to research accounts faster and respond more quickly to customer inquiries," says Lloyd Mistele, vice president, treasury, Toyota Financial Services.