BankservAfrica to process Nedbank cheques

According to Nedbank, both its clients and the bank will benefit from the BankservAfrica agreement to process a component of its cheque operations.

"Our clients will enjoy greater accuracy and improved availability of cheque and deposit slip images to expedite their reconciliation processes, as well as improved signature and technical verification processes, which will further reduce the risk of fraud", said Adriaan du Plessis, executive head of transactional banking at Nedbank Corporate.

Improved internal reporting

According to Du Plessis, Nedbank will be able to re-engineer and automate its existing processes resulting in improved internal reporting and the accuracy of payment information, as well as the overall efficiency of this payment stream. "Importantly, it will improve risk-management practices and, over time, reduce the high fixed costs of processing cheques," he said.

Martin Grunewald, BankservAfrica's business process outsourcing CEO, maintained that the consolidation of certain processes with declining usage in the payment system, combined with the resulting economy-of-scale benefits, is the ideal solution. He said that this is one of the reasons why BankservAfrica has vigorously pursued a centralisation strategy, in line with global trends.

Cheque volumes decrease

"We have seen cheque volumes across all banks decrease annually from 264 million, 10 years ago to 48 million today, as increasing numbers of consumers make use of credit and debit cards. By enabling banks to utilise our existing cheque-clearing infrastructure and expertise, we can offer a facility that extends the benefits from our operational efficiencies, resulting in meaningful cost savings."

BankservAfrica has developed an automated workflow system to improve on existing functions and enable new electronic processes to revolutionise the cheque imaging and processing environment.

"Using world-class solutions, such as Sybrin Systems and Unisys, we will be upgrading our existing reader sorter machines and acquiring new high-performance reader sorters equipped with high-resolution imaging capabilities to assist with character recognition," said Grunewald, who explained that the new processes will aid fraud checks, as the technology matches signatures automatically.