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Liberty Savings Bank is a $1.8 billion institution with 44 branches in Ohio, Florida, Colorado, and South Carolina. In operation since 1984, the last 22 years have been a period of constant growth and change for the bank. A Fiserv client since 2002, Liberty uses VISION for account processing and has Fiserv check processing services from five different IP centers located in Columbus, Denver, Tampa, Jacksonville and Newberry. With a mission to provide superior customer service and keep a small bank feel, Liberty specializes in commercial and consumer loans and mortgage accounts.
The Case for FraudGuard Digital Signature Verification
Like many banks, Liberty was using a manual process for verifying signatures on large dollar items. Jenny Davis, DDA Supervisor, explains their need for change, “We had four employees, one per region, working an hour each day to review images of about 500 items, compare them to signature cards and make a decision to pay or not pay. We needed to reduce the number of people involved, reduce our cost and lower our threshold to look at more items.” Even though both the items and the signature cards were imaged, it still took a long time. It was a tough job. Explains Ms. Davis “It is not easy to stay focused and manually review hundreds of signatures, which is why we had four people involved.” With the alarming increase in check fraud and identity theft, Liberty realized it was important to stay alert to potential fraud threats and review as many items as possible.
A Streamlined Process
FraudGuard Digital Signature Verification (DSV) works by automatically comparing the image of a signature presented for payment with the signature images in the history file for that account. With DSV, the number of items that an operator has to review dropped dramatically, even though the dollar threshold was lowered to half. Today, Liberty only requires one operator, working an average of 2 hours per day to review and decision the items rejected by DSV. “We are now reviewing 800 - 1000 items a day which is twice as many as before. The DSV system automatically reads about 70% of our items. That means that now only 30% of the items we analyze need a person to actually look at them,” says Ms. Davis.
Stopping Fraud
Liberty Savings Bank recently caught a $43,000 unauthorized item using DSV. Would they have caught it anyway? Very likely, due to the large dollar amount. Having DSV just adds another layer of comfort that a fraudulent item won’t be missed on a busy day, or a day when the regular reviewer is absent. “Most of the time, when there is an unauthorized signature, the client will just need to update their records to add another signatory and the item is okay to pay. In the case of the $43,000 item it was a fraud attempt so we were pleased to verify that the system caught it,” says Ms. Davis.
Straightforward Implementation
Adding DSV as a new service is a simple process for Fiserv clients. “The implementation process went very well. A DSV expert showed us how to build our history file, what might affect it, and just how the system would work overall. I had some follow up questions on the reporting and Fiserv was really great to work with on getting all of our questions answered,” says Ms. Davis. Once the system is running, the bank simply signs on every morning, reviews their exception items from the previous day and accepts them or calls the customer to verify whether they should be paid.
Overall DSV Benefits
According to Ms. Davis, the biggest benefit of DSV is an improved signature review process, “We have lowered our threshold while reducing our time. We have found new ways to catch more fraudulent situations than we possibly could have before.” With DSV everything is in one system, and there are more criteria to look at when reviewing an item. For instance, the system shows a history of the last ten signatures per account, not just one outdated signature on a card that the customer signed years ago. “Overall DSV is just more efficient for us and I would highly recommend it to other banks,” summarizes Ms. Davis.
Future Goals
With a strong and open minded management team dedicated to customer service and focused on increasing their account base, Liberty is ready for the future. The bank has been very proactive in using new technology from Fiserv. In addition to DSV, they are also successfully using ImageStream eStatements. Ms. Davis comments, “We realize that large banks are offering these new services and we need to offer them too. It just might be the difference between a customer staying with us or moving to a competitor. With Fiserv, adding a new service is easy and relatively inexpensive, so why wouldn’t we do it? Overall we are very pleased with our relationship with Fiserv.”
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