Location Isn’t Everything

Sometimes, size does matter. For California Bank & Trust, a subsidiary of Zions Bancorporation, a lack of scale was keeping the regional bank from snaring corporate customers that had multiple locations, often outside of CB&T's footprint. But the bank recognized an opportunity to compete with large national banks with the pending arrival of Check 21.

Based in San Diego, California Bank & Trust (more than $9 billion in assets) has more than 90 branch offices. But the bank does not have brick-and-mortar buildings on every corner in every city and many of its commercial customers were forced to send their daily deposits to the bank via courier. In addition, those businesses with multiple locations often were required to have multiple depository accounts.

All in the Family

Seizing Check 21 as an impetus, CB&T did not have to look far for a solution. Another Zions Bancorporation subsidiary, Salt Lake City-based NetDeposit, had developed remote capture technology. Because of the companies' affiliation with Zions, CB&T did not explore other vendors' offerings.

California Bank & Trust participated in a two-year pilot program of the application, NetCapture, Remote for Business, with a few corporate clients beginning in 2002 and went live with the remote capture service in July 2004. No hardware changes were necessary for the implementation.

NetDeposit software generates a posting file to the bank's demand deposit account (DDA) system, which posts customers' deposits to their accounts. NetDeposit staging server applications, residing at Zions' operational center, perform the automated security, risk control and validation processes for each deposit, including balance validation, inspection for image and data integrity, and fraud detection.

Now, "The customer's location actually becomes a branch, and they can consolidate all their regional depository accounts into one," says John Russell, SVP, cash management, CB&T. "We install the software and the scanner; the customer scans the check and transmits the images through the Remote Deposit service; and the bank's customers' accounts are credited," he continues. "An image replacement document [IRD] that contains the front and back images of the check are printed at remote print sites throughout the country for presentment to the paying bank. Depository check processing is accelerated from days to hours."

As long as CB&T corporate customers are depositing checks from a U.S. institution, they can make deposits from anywhere in the world - without delivery costs. The solution also allows them to consolidate regional bank accounts, and it accelerates funds availability. According to CB&T, 99 percent of the clients it has approached have adopted the application. The bank provides training and support.

"This is the next evolution in electronic banking from a treasury management perspective," says Michael Campbell, EVP and director of corporate services, CB&T. "Remote Deposit allows us to be extremely competitive with the large banks that have extensive branches."

The bank's game plan, Russell notes, is to sign up as many of its existing customers as possible before competing services arrive on the scene. In addition, the bank's marketing department plans to pursue customers that are now doing business at large banks. "We know we lost opportunities because we didn't have a convenient branch location," Russell says. "Now we can stop that."

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SNAPSHOT

Institution: California Bank & Trust (San Diego).

Assets: More than $9 billion.

Business Challenge: Offer corporate customers remote deposit capabilities.

Solution: NetDeposit's (Salt Lake City) NetCapture, Remote for Business.