Case Study
Pacific Western Bank
Property Management Lockbox Solution from Fiserv
Supports Industry-Leading Service and Rapid Growth
For nearly 30 years, small and medium-sized businesses
throughout California have looked to Pacific Western Bank as
their trusted partner. The bank is known for its dedication to
helping businesses optimize cash flow and enhance efficiency
through a comprehensive suite of products and services.
Pacific Western Bank has established itself
as a leading provider of lockbox services
to a growing number of homeowners
associations (HOAs) and property
management companies. “Today we
process over 174,000 payments each
month. Because the business is continually
growing, we need a lockbox service that
is scalable and able to absorb new volume
without delay. Moreover, we need a
solution that is accurate, reliable and secure.
Fiserv has consistently proven to be the
right partner for Pacific Western Bank – they
help us continue to grow this strategically
important line of business,” explained Jim
Salin, Executive Vice President and Business
Development Manager.
“Fiserv is helping us position our bank to take on
increasing volumes of lockbox deposits while at
the same time providing maximum processing
efficiency for our clients.”
Jim Salin
EVP and Business Development Manager
Pacific Western Bank
Client Profile
With $5.5 billion in assets and 76 full-service
community bank branches throughout the
state, Pacific Western Bank is the 15th
largest commercial bank in California.
The bank has nearly 30 years of
experience serving small and mediumsized businesses and is recognized for
providing a comprehensive suite of products
and services to help optimize cash flow
and enhance the operating efficiency
of thousands of clients. Additionally, its
subsidiary BFI Business Finance and its
division First Community Financial, Pacific
Western provide working capital financing to
growing companies located throughout the
United States.
More Efficient Lockbox Processing
by Design
Online Research Capabilities Create a
Competitive Advantage
Together, Fiserv and Pacific Western
Bank developed a lockbox solution that
could handle the bank’s rapid growth and
solve many of the problems that impede
productivity and cash flow for its clients:
The Fiserv solution’s online research
capabilities are a key advantage for Pacific
Western Bank and its clients. RemitStream
Receivables Online is a secure Web-based
application that provides same-day access
to owner and resident checks and coupon
images. Images are available to bank
representatives within hours of processing,
and searches can be conducted by HOA
number or other data in the coupon scanline.
“This is a huge benefit for the bank, because
it saves time and enables us to provide
faster service,” Salin said. “And as the
number of clients we serve grows, so too
does our need to be more efficient.”
• Stranded or ad hoc payments
• Delays caused by “unbankable” items
such as payments without coupons,
checks written to the wrong company
name, missing information, or residents
paying with money orders
• Time-consuming manual research tasks
• Integration of paper and electronic
payments
• Gaining access to information on
payments
The result was RemitStream Property
Management Lockbox from Fiserv, a
specialized lockbox service for the property
management company customers of
financial institutions. “The service enables
assessment payments from residents
to be sent to a central P.O. Box, with the
deposits made to separate accounts (DDAs)
for each homeowner’s association,” stated
Steven Larson, Fiserv Account Executive.
“The system captures images of all
payment documents and sends out daily
data transmissions, sorted by homeowner
association, for automated posting to the
HOA accounts receivable systems and
the DDAs.”
In addition, the bank makes the online
images available to its HOA and property
management clients. “This allows them to
handle some research tasks and customer
inquiries without our help,” Salin added, “and
they like being able to get that information
immediately. Their feedback is very positive.”
Another advantage of RemitStream
Receivables Online is the elimination of
geographic constraints for the bank and
its clients. “Due to our online and remote
lockbox capabilities,” said Salin, “we were
able to add a very large client on the East
coast with 12,000 items per month.”
Automated Exception Processing
Benefits Bank’s Clients
For most property management and HOA
businesses, unbankable payments continue
to be a costly and time-consuming issue.
When information on a payment coupon
cannot be read by a scanner, a check can’t
be matched to a specific unit or property
account, or other vital information is missing,
these items require manual research and
can take days to process.
To address this major headache for its
clients, Pacific Western Bank subscribes to
the RemitStream Exception Handling service
from Fiserv, which automates many of the
decisions about exception items previously
handled by employees. Decisions may
be made to process or return an item or
provide information such as a homeowners
association number that the property
management company needs to capture.
Items that the lockbox customer decides to
have Fiserv process are done so by the end
of the next business day.
“Automated exception processing is a
huge benefit to our clients,” Salin noted.
“Most banks send exception items back
to the property management company,
pushing the problem back to their
customers. We are one of the few banks
offering automated exception processing
which helps our clients improve cash flow
and reduce their workload.”
In addition, the RemitStream Exception
Handling: Smart Lookup feature has been
added to the Fiserv solution to further
accelerate the workflow and reduce the
number of exceptions. Starting with a
customer database provided by each HOA
or property management client, the system
stores the check MICR data associated
with each resident in the database. When
the lockbox system receives a payment
with a missing coupon or a check with the
wrong payee name, the system searches
the database and if possible, automatically
fills in the missing information. “This feature
has reduced the number of unbankable
items we have to handle from 200 a day to
only 50 a day,” said Salin. “The smart lookup
feature reduces errors, eliminates manual
corrections and speeds the handling of
exceptions that require manual intervention.”
Remote Capture of Stranded Payments
Improves Cash Flow
Fiserv also enables Pacific Western Bank
to help its clients accelerate processing of
“stranded” payments, such as checks that
are dropped off at an HOA office. Using
a desktop scanner, the bank’s clients can
remotely capture these payments and
transmit them to the central lockbox site.
These payments are then automatically
integrated into the appropriate organization’s
workflow, accelerating posting and cash
flow. “We also take our clients ACH and
credit card data and append that to the data
transmission, providing a streamlined and
cost-effective service,” Salin added.
Fiserv is driving
innovation in Payments,
Processing Services,
Risk & Compliance,
Customer & Channel
Management and
Insights & Optimization,
and leading the
transformation of financial
services technology to
help our clients change
the way financial services
are delivered. Visit
www.fiserv.com for a look
at what’s next, right now.
Unparalleled Service and Industry
Leadership are Now Within Reach
Through technology designed to address
the pain points of HOA and property
management clients, Pacific Western
Bank is well on its way to becoming the
premier provider of property management
lockbox services in the country. “Fiserv
has worked with us as a business partner
to develop products and services that we
need to grow,” said Salin. “Steve Larson
serves as our dedicated liaison to the
Fiserv programming staff. RemitStream
Receivables Online is usually enough, but
when one of our customers has a question,
he makes sure that we get the answers we
need quickly.”
Salin also noted that Fiserv’s solutions are
helping to attract new HOA and property
management companies. “Fiserv is
handling 10 times the volume of our old
provider,” he said. “Last year, our volume
doubled in a three-month period, and it was
not a problem.”
In the future, the bank plans to work with
Fiserv to offer increased flexibility, enhanced
productivity and easier research capabilities
for its clients. “Our clients want easy-to-use
yet advanced solutions,” Salin concluded.
This includes reducing their workload and
handling more tasks electronically. “Fiserv
is helping us position our bank to take on
increasing volumes of lockbox deposits
while at the same time providing maximum
processing efficiency for our clients.”
Challenge
Pacific Western Bank wanted to position
itself as a leading provider of property
management lockbox services. Rapid
growth, however, resulted in the need for
a more robust, scalable solution to serve
its clients.
Solution
“A Premier® account processing client
since 1994, Pacific Western Bank, leveraged
it’s long partnership with Fiserv to developed
a lockbox solution that could handle the
bank’s growth and improve efficiency for
property management and HOA clients.”
Fiserv’s solutions are enabling online
decisioning, accelerated research, more
efficient processes and significantly reduced
exception handling.
Proof Points
Leveraging its partnership with Fiserv to
develop a robust lockbox solution, Pacific
Western Bank has reached substantial
growth goals such as:
• Ability to handle 10 times the volume
of lockbox items it could handle before
implementing the solution.
• Increased capability to add clients in any
part of the country without geographic
constraints.
• Industry leadership and recognition
by significantly reducing the volume of
unbankable items for clients.
Connect With Us
For more information on RemitStream
Property Management Lockbox services,
call 800-872-7882 or contact your
account manager.
Fiserv, Inc.
255 Fiserv Drive
Brookfield, WI 53045
800-872-7882
262-879-5322
[email protected]
www.fiserv.com
© 2012 Fiserv, Inc. or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Fiserv is a registered trademark of Fiserv, Inc. Other products referenced in this material may
be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
BS72REM05121