SVPCo and Unisys Corporation have signed an agreement to help banks transform their operations and benefit from the Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act (Check 21) and the opportunities offered by digital check image exchange.
Under the agreement with SVPCo - the leading bank-owned, private sector provider of payment services to financial institutions in the United States - Unisys will offer consulting services to help financial institutions meet the business and technical requirements of Check 21. Unisys consulting services help banks realize the industry goal of exchanging check images for faster, more secure and cost-effective payment operations.
"Unisys has worked very closely with us on Check 21 initiatives and technology developments. We believe this new agreement with SVPCo will help other banks better plan the changes needed for check image exchange," said Paul Obermeyer, senior vice president and director of operations services at Comerica Bank. "We look forward to continuing to work with Unisys to provide market leading solutions in this increasingly critical area of the financial industry."
Unisys will use its 3D Visible Enterprise (3D-VE) as the preferred methodology to support the Check 21 and image exchange consulting services. Unisys 3D-VE is an innovative approach to understanding the cause and effect relationships between business vision, business operations and the information technology systems that support them, helping to reduce the risks associated with implementing new technologies.
"Banks want to easily see the real effects that implementing check image exchange will have on their operations," said Hank Farrar, president and chief operating officer of SVPCo. "With its deep knowledge of payments and its technology expertise, Unisys provides comprehensive and unique solutions that allow banks to better anticipate change. We look forward to working together to encourage faster adoption of a check image exchange network throughout the industry."
Unisys has conducted Check 21 and image exchange assessments at several top 10 banks. Through these assessments, Unisys maps out the current state of a bank's check processing and related procedures and the future plan of what check image exchange will involve. By using sophisticated modeling tools and its deep expertise in payments, which includes processing more than half the world's checks, Unisys helps banks understand the gaps that exist in their current image exchange plans and allows management to better formulate a transformation strategy. These assessments allowed the company to identify more than 100 business processes potentially affected by Check 21 and image exchange.
"SVPCo is quickly setting the industry standard for image exchange, and we look forward to helping advance its image exchange network," said Frank Liddy, Unisys vice president and managing partner of its North American banking practice. "By working together, we can help improve our nation's payment system, replacing paper checks with images to provide faster and better service to customers."