As a third-party lockbox service provider, whenever we partner with other banks, the primary reason for this arrangement is to enable these financial institutions to offer lockbox services to their customers who want it. That said, when you’re working for a firm whose core competency is to extract, scan, data capture, and settle mail-based payments, there exists another way banks might leverage this partnership to their benefit: outsourcing loan payments.
Within the realm of loan operations, loan payment processing is, far and away, the most manual and tedious aspect of the job. Simply removing the payments from the envelopes by itself is a time-consuming and arduous task, and while other businesses might have the option of saying, “I’ll do this later when I have more time” the quick and accurate application of loan payments has ramifications to the bank’s balance sheet, customer service, and even to debt recovery operations.
When banks choose to outsource their loan payment or mail-in deposit processing operations to a lockbox service, they often times are surprised at how cost effective the service turns out to be. Unburdened from this obligation, banks are able to reduce or re-assign the resources otherwise engaged to opening payment envelopes and recording payments to other productive areas of the loan operations process.
By going with an expert in remittance processing, cutting edge automation in the extraction, scanning and documentation activities of loan payments helps speed up the end to end process and cuts down on processing errors. Finding proper homes for every payment becomes a fully web-enabled activity, and every transaction is digitized for easy retrieval whenever research activities might require it.
From a customer satisfaction standpoint, when it comes to the application of loan payments, consistent and unyielding perfection is expected. Not many customers call their bank and say, “Have I ever told you I really appreciate the way you handle my loan payments?” but if you inadvertently misapply a customer’s payment, you can expect your customer to reach out and provide some constructive feedback on how they think you’re doing.
So, if you haven’t considered outsourcing your loan payment processing to a lockbox service provider, it may be something worth looking into. With a rough sense of monthly mail-based payment volume, Lighthouse Payment Services, Inc can provide a pro forma price quote, so you’re better able to determine its cost-effectiveness for your organization. Give us a call!