Complete with Receivables360, WAUSAU's leading receivables suite, the wholesale lockbox will allow Sandy Spring Bank to process every form of payment with automated imaging, routing and validating, resulting in increased cash flow, reduced capture time and improved exceptions handling.

Sandy Spring Bank, a subsidiary of Sandy Spring Bancorp, Inc., the largest bank holding company headquartered in Maryland with 43 locations throughout the state and northern Virginia, was looking to improve its lockbox processes and enhance the customer experience. Sandy Spring Bank needed a vendor that would be able to work with its existing legacy system, provide a local presence and scale to the needs of the bank.

"We had used other vendors for the past four years, but all were devoid of a solution that could integrate seamlessly with our legacy solutions. WAUSAU not only provided us with this integration capability, but they were amenable to opening a processing site in the Washington, D.C. area to provide the local support our customers needed," said Tina Giorgio, senior vice president of deposit operations and payments for Sandy Spring Bank. "For a community bank like ours, WAUSAU's willingness to offer outsourcing from our own backyard was a critical decision factor and demonstrated its dedication to clients, offering a preview of the continued support they'd offer us and, in return, our customers."

The decision to implement WAUSAU's financial outsourcing services allows Sandy Spring Bank to grow its customer footprint by taking the time-intensive back room payments processing burden off its employees, freeing their time to focus on customer service and sales. The online long-term archive attracted Sandy Spring Bank to the solution, given its wide client base, including healthcare providers struggling with expenses related to administrative tasks like cash collection.

"By implementing our wholesale financial outsourcing services, Sandy Spring Bank can focus less on onless on processing needs, and more on providing a better banking experience for customers," said Kathy Strasser, executive vice president of solution management for WAUSAU Financial Systems. "With lockbox being the extremely labor-intensive process it is and with HIPAA requirements continually evolving, many financial institutions need additional support to free up resources and focus on service excellence and building the business. Our solution helps them get there."

In addition, with WAUSAU's wholesale lockbox offering, financial institutions are able to grow recurring fee-based revenues in three ways:

Entering into new vertical markets such as healthcare and property management;
Expanding their geographical footprint through a unique nationwide capture network that includes more than 30 sites within 150 miles of 80 percent of the U.S. population; and
Offering corporate customers a true integrated receivables solution that aggregates, automates and accelerates the receivables processing cycle.



WAUSAU's industry-leading receivables solutions for both wholesale and retail lockbox currently are deployed by seven of the top 10 financial institutions in the country. Approximately 80 percent of all wholesale lockbox transactions are processed on an industry-leading receivables solution from WAUSAU.

Sandy Spring Bank will deploy WAUSAU's wholesale lockbox outsourcing solution in spring 2012.