Navy Federal, the world's largest credit union with more than $23 billion in assets and over 2.5 million members, seeks to leverage the efficiency created by the recently implemented Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act, or "Check 21."

Navy Federal will use NCR's ImageMark Passport to capture, balance and consolidate cheque images captured throughout its 106 member service centres worldwide. These transactions will be electronically transmitted to Navy Federal's processing center in Vienna, Virginia, where NCR's ImageMark Transaction Manager system will validate, balance and consolidate cheque images. Balanced transaction files will be sent to Navy Federal's host system for cash letter generation and to the image exchange application provided by VECTORsgi. Incoming paper and electronic transactions from other financial institutions will be processed using NCR's ImageMark Transaction Manager's Enterprise Balancing application.

NCR's ImageMark Archive will store the payment transaction data and images for seven years. Credit Union members worldwide, including home banking customers, will be able to retrieve this information. NCR's business continuity architecture, which ensures system availability, is included in the overall implementation.

"In order to realise our strategic plans for Check 21, we needed to replace our cheque archiving and microfilm system with a single enterprise-wide image archive. We also wanted to utilise distributed cheque-image capture to further automate deposit processing," said Ebb Ebbesen, senior vice president of Process Improvement at Navy Federal. "NCR provided a proven strategic platform to manage the entire end-to-end process, while ensuring compatibility with both our legacy systems and our new image-exchange application from VECTORsgi. NCR has the in-depth understanding and experience to implement such a large-scale deployment. With these initiatives in place, Navy Federal is prepared for Check 21 and the electronic cheque-processing era."

Joe Kniceley, NCR's vice president of Payment and Imaging solutions, Americas region, said, "NCR's experience in large imaging deployments across multiple locations is unmatched in the industry. Our integrated suite of ImageMark solutions and services deliver on the promise of Check 21 by speeding the flow of transaction information, previously hindered by the requirement to move paper checks. We are pleased to help Navy Federal strengthen its member services, while reducing processing costs."