BankFinancial Wins WAUSAU Financial Systems' Paperless Challenge

MOSINEE, Wis., Oct. 23, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- WAUSAU Financial Systems today announced Illinois-based BankFinancial as the winner of the inaugural Paperless Challenge, which invited financial institutions to share stories about paper-imposed challenges faced around efficiency, productivity, cost or compliance, and what "green" initiative they have implemented to help them triumph over those challenges. BankFinancial took the lead as their paperless solutions span the breadth of the financial institution.

It all started in 2008, when BankFinancial, a $1.5 billion financial institution with 20 branches throughout the state of Illinois, began capturing customer transactions on the back-counter of its branches, thus eliminating the need for the bank to physically transport checks to a central location for processing.  Fast forward to today, and the institution is nearly 100 percent paperless, having deployed solutions ranging from electronic signature pads, allowing for tellers to automatically index and archive customer signatures, to a robust teller capture system that transmits deposit images and data files from branches to central operations.

"We have come a long way on the journey to becoming a completely paperless financial institution, and are honored to receive this recognition of our efforts," said Rich Maslanka, Vice President, BankFinancial. "In the end, it's all about providing a better banking experience for our customers, and the reduction of paper enables our institution to spend more time with them to better understand and meet their needs."    

Other highlights along BankFinancial's journey to becoming a fully paperless institution include:

• Teller and back counter:
  • Teller tickets and paper checks are scanned at the point of presentment, eliminating tedious additional scanning work and reducing the need for branch write-offs specifically related to checks not balancing. As a result, tellers have reduced time spent doing end of day balancing by 10 to 15 minutes, and BankFinancial has eliminated 30 workstations at 20 locations. The bank can now also handle balancing transactions at the teller line, significantly reducing the number of adjustments handled by back-office staff and enabling the clear transactions throughout the business day, opening the door to better utilization of float.
  • Customer service also benefits, as branch patrons are now presented with a "universal ticket" for all types of teller-line transactions (e.g. withdrawals, deposits, loan payments, etc.) by automatically sorting documents electronically after they have been captured.  Balancing errors are caught in real-time, so there's less chance of a customer receiving an adjustment notice.
• Treasury management, loan and new accounts desk:
  • Internal and new account documents that were historically printed are now saved as an image, cutting back on costs associated with printing and filing.
• Throughout the back office:
  • Logs that were previously kept to track an event have been replaced with the ability to add an electronic note to the image.

"We were not only delighted by the quantity of submissions we received, but the quality of the stories shared with us of the challenges of paper banking and aspirations and benefits of going paperless," said Kathy Strasser, executive vice president of solution management for WAUSAU Financial Systems. "The stories reaffirm our belief that moving towards paperless banking is a way to reduce inefficiencies, reduce costs and eliminate lost data."

Paperless banking provides a way to automate paper-intensive processes both inside and outside the branch. These processes can save financial institutions more than $4.3 billion annually, providing countless opportunities across all departments.

For more information on WAUSAU's paperless solutions, please visit www.wausaufs.com.

About WAUSAU Financial Systems

WAUSAU Financial Systems is a premier provider of payment and receivables processing solutions, helping businesses of all types move money faster. With its products, services and consulting, WAUSAU works with customers to speed check processing, electronic presentment, ACH payments, transaction processing, distributed capture and enterprise content management. WAUSAU holds the No. 1 market share position in retail and wholesale remittance processing solutions. WAUSAU processes more than $1 trillion in payments each year through its work with more than 650 organizations, and maintains more than 30 percent of all U.S. lockbox volume. The company works with 13 of the 25 largest financial institutions, 42 percent of insurance companies with more than 5 million customers and 24 percent of utilities with more than 100,000 customers. More than 200 financial institutions use WAUSAU's remote deposit capture service, and industry consultants Celent and Aite have ranked WAUSAU's remote capture functionality above all competitors.

SOURCE WAUSAU Financial Systems

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