Item Processing Introduction
This introduction comes directly from our own portal, where we help employees understand each department's role at CU*Answers. Here, we share the same information with you that we share with our employees.
Karen Chesbro
Vice President, Item Processing
The CU*Answers IP Dept was started in 1985 with one credit union, processing 5 checks a day. Our total processing time was 15 minutes, which included powering up the equipment up, running the checks and then shutting the equipment down. The very first time we had an NSF check we weren't quite sure what to do with it. Boy, have we come a long way!
Today, our Kentwood IP office does image check processing for 72 CU's throughout the state of Michigan and we are averaging approximately 3,500,000 checks a month. We not only process for CU*Base (online) clients but we also have many self-processors & service bureaus (offline) clients as well. As our volumes have grown over the years so has our staff. We now have 26 employees who work in the check processing and direct deposit areas.
One of the things that sets CU*Answers IP apart from our competitors is that we provide free check images. Our image retrieval website, CU*Checkviewer has provided over 245,000 free image copies to our clients and their members throughout the 2002 business year. Images are currently available at the member level to CU*Base clients through It’s Me 247 and will become available to our offline client's home banking products in 2003.
IP also has a Direct Deposit program that is doing very well. We are now averaging monthly volumes of 1,200,000 checks, with our remote location in Saginaw encoding approx. 55% of this volume. We currently offer several options for direct deposit processing. Our clients have the option of using the CheckMate program with Comerica Bank (Saginaw), CheckMate with 5th/3rd Bank (Kentwood), the deposits may be sent directly to the FRB, or they may now be sent directly to Standard Federal Bank for processing. Each CU decides which program they will use and we support their decision.
Did you ever wonder what happens to the checks that you write to pay your bills? Stop by and see us sometime - we would love to show you what we do!
When Karen is away from the Item Processing office, she is very busy trying to keep up with the schedules of her teenage daughter and son. Newly licensed teens with cars, simultaneous sporting events, and dating teens require her free time to be spent looking for the right hair color to hide the premature gray.
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