Ascertain

Lockbox services are offered to corporate customers where the customers receive payment in high volume. The customer sends the payment advice and cheques to the bank through courier on multiple times a day. The payment advice and cheques will be processed and various output will be generated which will be used to upload to the core banking system. Also, the generated output file will be sent to the customer for their payment tracking. The generated output may differ for each customer as customer’s backend system differs.

Advantages of Collection/Lockbox services to corporate customers:

• Customer can use their resources to concentrate on their core-business
• Avoid having a lot of headcount and managing their operation
• The money may be available quickly since bank also want to give value added service and short TAT

Advantages of Collection/Lockbox services to banks:

• Bank able to retain their customer with their value added services
• Bank able to collect large amount of fund from their customer’s account. The money can be used for short/long term investment or provide soft loan
• Bank may be able to charge operation fee for providing the Lockbox services

Key processes involved in Lockbox services are:

• Receiving Consignment and log
• Technical Checking
• Payee Name
• Verify Date (post-dated / out-dated)
• Word and figure different
• UV Checking and etc.
• Data Capture and Processing
• CTCS Scanning
• Data capture. The capturing of information, checking may generally differs for each customer
• Maker and Checker Verification
• Output
• CTCS file generation
• Upload File generation for bank’s back end system
• Customer’s desired file for their back end system
• Reconciliation and end of day report generation
• File encryption for the output generated
• CD Burning / File transfer using SFTP

Banks may outsource the Lockbox services to Ascertain for various reasons. The bank receives the payment file and cheque from the customers and redirects to Ascertain for processing. We in turn process and generate the output file for bank as well as customers.