Hampden Bank (NASDAQ - HBNK), today announced it has selected Open Solutions' tMagic Teller Capture platform to improve customer service, reduce costs and improve operational efficiencies.
Open Solutions' tMagic is fully integrated with the bank's enterprise-wide core processing platform, Open Solutions' The Complete Banking Solution: DNA.
Open Solutions Inc. is a leading provider of integrated enabling technologies for financial services providers throughout the United States, Canada and other international markets. Established in 1852, Hampden Bank is located in Springfield, Mass., and is a full-service community bank with nine branch locations and approximately $568 million in assets.
Senior Vice President of Information Technology and Operations for Hampden Bank Sheryl Shinn, said, "We feel there are several areas in the bank in which we will see significant cost reductions and operational efficiencies gained following the implementation of the tMagic teller capture platform. The first area is customer service. Our tellers are truly the front line with our customers. Because the solution is fully integrated, the checks are scanned, verified and automatically posted into the core platform. We estimate there will be an 80 percent reduction in keystrokes, which significantly reduces processing errors and frees up our tellers to concentrate on building relationships, versus simply processing transactions."
Open Solutions' fully integrated tMagic enables tellers to capture and scan checks, withdrawal tickets, loan coupons, general ledger tickets, as well as savings and checking deposits slips, in real time at the point-of-presentment. Once the document is captured, the MICR line data is automatically prefilled and posted into the core platform, reducing keystrokes and the potential for teller errors. Extensive image quality checks are performed on each scanned item, including verification of MICR, CAR/LAR and IQUA. The teller verifies the prefilled data is in balance before committing the transaction to the database. Then, imaged documents can be sent to an archive and an imaged cash letter prepared.
"While teller capture solutions have been adopted by relatively few financial institutions thus far, a growing number see teller capture as the obvious end-game," said Bob Meara, senior analyst, Celent Banking Group. "One historic barrier has been a lack of pre-integrated solutions. In this regard, tMagic will likely be well received."
"Currently we have an end-of-the-day rush to capture images in a centralized branch location and then process the next-day exception items," said Shinn. "Once tMagic is installed, we anticipate significant personnel savings since these cumbersome processes will virtually be eliminated. Additionally, the balancing and repair of rejected items will happen at the teller window at the time of transaction, also eliminating the associated item processing fees. Missing signatures, dates, duplicate items or insufficient funds are immediately detected, narrowing the bank's chances of exposure to fraud."
Open Solutions' tMagic improves operational efficiencies by reducing manual data entry, allows real-time processing and balancing to eliminate the day-end bottleneck, maintains transaction integrity by capturing all items together at point-of-presentment and prevents fraud by capturing the front and back of the check - automatically verifying the check and alerting the teller if any items are questionable. tMagic reduces the teller workload by approximately 15 minutes each day since all previous transactions have been scanned, posted and cleared. Additionally, the replacement of deposit, savings, general ledger and cash tickets with virtual tickets can reduce costs by $.02 per ticket. Most importantly, the integrated teller capture solution allows tellers to better serve customers/members, cross-sell or market other products and build deeper relationships.
"Since the passage of Check 21 legislation, there has been an evolution of deposit capture solutions - first branch capture followed by merchant and ATM capture and now teller capture," said David Reim, product manager for Open Solutions' imaged payment technology group. "Initially, most institutions instituted a branch capture solution, which meant sending batches of work that may have included items that were incorrectly scanned, items that were not balanced or items that contained human errors, resulting in 'day two' adjustments. With teller capture, there are no day two adjustments, resulting in increased transaction integrity, faster processing, business continuity, immediate check verification and operational efficiencies. Having the tMagic solution fully integrated with our core processing technologies is just yet another evolution of the sophisticated product suite we offer our clients."