They include ABN-AMRO, Fifth Third Bank, First Citizens Bank, First Horizon National Corporation, Frost National Bank, Harris Bank, National City Corporation, Navy Federal Credit Union, Popular Inc., U.S. Bank, UMB Bank, and Union Bank of California. Another "top 10" bank rounds out the current customer list for the Solution.

"TowerGroup estimates that VECTORsgi's current customers represent 40 percent of the future volume of image exchange," said Robert Hunt, senior analyst at the Needham, Mass. based research and consulting firm. "The top financial institutions realise they need to exploit the full value of images and control new transaction revenues with quality imaging solutions. While actual exchange may take some time to work into the large bank market, image exchange purchases are ongoing due to heightened competition and advances in technology."

Susan Long, senior vice president of SVPCO, a business partner of VECTORsgi, said, "Forward-looking financial institutions realise that quality image exchange is necessary in order to maintain a competitive stance in the marketplace. The acceptance rates demonstrated by VECTORsgi lay a strong foundation for the future of exchange. VECTORsgi and its partners provide products that allow financial institutions to realise the full advantages of image exchange."

The early leaders have already begun to test their image exchange capabilities. While many VECTORsgi-enabled banks are currently testing exchanges between their peers, through SVPCO, with the Federal Reserve and within Viewpointe, First Horizon National Corporation has moved into production and expects to increase its exchange volume in the near future. The first step in image exchange is capturing the image. Using VECTOR:Capture for Prime Pass, Union Bank of California recorded a period during which more than 135 million items were processed without a single missing image. This has proven to be the smallest missing image rate in the industry.

"Regardless of what you may have read about the slow adoption of image exchange, our sales indicate a huge investment by large banks in the technology foundation, which is needed for rapid growth in image exchange and the distributed capture of cheque images," said Sydney Smith Hicks, president and CEO of VECTORsgi. "Nearly 50 percent of the large banks that have made an image exchange software decision have selected VECTORsgi. Now that the early adapters are experiencing successful exchange with our solutions, we anticipate a spike in demand that is second to none."