Finance Wanted.

By Tatiana Vazulina

Quality

At the forefront of Check 21 are issues of image quality and usability and how to ensure that standards are met. Image quality refers to specifications that determine if images are:

� partial or heavily skewed
� piggybacked-an image scanned onto part of another image
� folded or have torn corners
� have excessive spot noise
� too light or dark
� below or above the set file size
� illegible, unreadable

Causes of poor image quality include poor paper quality or preparation, presentation of paper to the camera, reduced imaging system conditions, etc. that can often be fixed if caught in the initial capture phase.

Usability

Image usability takes a closer look at data on the check image to determine if the check is usable , negotiable or contains errors that might prevent it from being collected:

� missing or illegible fields, including date, payee line, or signature
� missing bank endorsement
� missing or illegible amounts (courtesy and legal)
� missing or illegible payor information
� missing or illegible bank name and address
� unreadable MICR line
� endorsements that cannot be verified/may be faulty

Full Image Integrity

Check image quality assessment can alert financial institutions to potential problems with the images of checks being captured-skewed or piggybacked checks may quickly indicate that there is a problem with the bank's imaging equipment, allowing an opportunity to re-scan images before hard copies are relocated or destroyed.

However, image quality assessment alone is not sufficient to determine if the item is acceptable for image exchange. While the quality of an image may be adequate, the information extracted from the image (image usability) may not be comprehensive enough to complete the image exchange and collection process. For instance, the signature may not be present or endorsements may be missing, rendering the check uncollectible.

Inadequate image quality/usability necessitates that checks be returned to the Bank of First Deposit for rework. The collecting bank risks delay of payment, incurring additional costs and time associated with researching poor image quality and eroding the confidence of the paying bank. The paying bank risks customer service issues and lower efficiencies. Both also may have to accept a higher incidence of check fraud by not utilizing image integrity assessment technologies.

What Can be Done

Choosing technology to address both image quality and usability will strengthen an institution's position. Systems that incorporate advanced pattern recognition technology help improve performance of the image analysis and recognition process. Some technologies work seamlessly with standard check scanning equipment already in place, and give financial institutions the ability to deploy image capture, truncation and exchange at central or distributed capture facilities.

For more information, please visit http://www.parascript.com