Non-bank foreign exchange operator Travelex is using character recognition technology from Texas-based BancTec to process the 1.5 million handwritten sales sheets it receives every year.
BancTec's intelligent character recognition (IRC) technology has been installed at Travelex's headquarters in Peterborough to process sales sheets that are hand-written by overseas agents. BancTec says the technology will save Travelex over £400,000 in the first year alone.
Travelex says previously a team of 35 people was needed to complete the task, sorting and manually keying the details into the sales ledger. Simon Richardson, commercial operations manager at Travelex, says the system has proven to be highly efficient, freeing staff to work on more productive tasks.
"We have also dramatically reduced reject rates and improved the accuracy of our sales ledger," he says.
BancTec claims its IRC system has a data accuracy of 99.9 percent. The software will reject sales sheets that are ambiguous for repair by an administrator.
The vendor has also provided Travelex with a digital archive of all sales sheets and a disaster recovery system has also been set up at a separate location in Coventry.