A trip to the bank is not Maribeth Chlan’s favorite chore—and she’s found a way to avoid it.
Chlan, the accounting manager for Lakeville-based construction company College City Homes, is responsible for making the company’s deposits, and in the past, that’s involved near-daily repetitions of the eight-mile drive between business and bank. “We have a low volume of checks, but those checks typically have a high dollar value, because we’re a homebuilder,” Chlan says. “It’s imperative when we do get a check that it gets into our account as quickly as possible.”
Tired of the trip, Chlan began making remote deposits—using operating software and a scanner to e-mail deposits from her desk. The difference, she says, is considerable. “Not going to the bank is the best,” she says. “It took a half hour out of my day, and I don’t have that kind of time to waste.”
Ultimately, the customer is responsible for any misuse of the system.
Chlan, a client of Maplewood-based Premier Bank, isn’t the only local businessperson who’s making deposits from her desk. Some local banks have begun offering remote deposit, while others are developing the product and hope to make it available to customers soon.
Check 21, a new law that went into effect in October 2004 and is gradually reshaping the way the banking industry handles checks, was the impetus for the new remote deposit programs. The law allows banks to clear checks by transmitting electronic images of the checks, rather than the paper itself. For instance, if a customer writes you a check, it must be cleared through both yours and your customer’s banks. The banks can now do this electronically, if they are equipped for it. But if one or either bank can‘t accept electronic images, the check will clear through a processing center, such as one run by the Federal Reserve System.
