Contributed by: Tato Munoz, IT Director, D. L. Evans Bank
D.L. Evans Bank is one of the leading banks in Idaho, which manages over $1.2 billion in assets, has dozens of branches and offices across the state, and offers various investment services. Along with evolving client service expectations and the increasing costs of records management and compliance, D.L. Evans needed a technology that could adapt to changing demands.
The firm’s large customer base required excessive paper routing between multiple branches and the head office. The bank’s lending department decided that their current methods were increasingly difficult to justify the costs of managing paper loan packets, both in money and time.
“Before Laserfiche, loan packets had to be shipped overnight from a branch to the corporate office for evaluation,” says Tato/Gerardo Munoz, D.L. Evans’ IT Director. “With Laserfiche, it takes as little as 10 minutes for a lending officer at the corporate office to evaluate a loan application received by a branch location 200 miles away.”
This operational improvement alone saved the bank $3,000 in annual postage costs. After the initial implementation to reduce the paper volume within the lending department, the use of Laserfiche gained traction in other parts of the bank’s operations.
“Over time, our use of Laserfiche evolved from a document management system to a business-critical system,” recounts Munoz. “Every process can be refined and automated, and Laserfiche was able to help with that.”
Laserfiche is used in every back office department, including lending, human resources, and accounts payable. It has become such a critical infrastructure tool that even tellers require Laserfiche to do their job.
“Laserfiche helps us keep our customer information current, whether they make changes online or visit a branch,” says Munoz. “Tellers can immediately send customer information to be processed by specialists in the loan, credit, or mortgage department.”
Laserfiche has become heavily ingrained in D.L. Evans’ processes due to its ability to integrate with Fiserv—a core financial services technology.
“Being able to integrate Laserfiche was important because Fiserv is part of every financial and banking process from managing transactions to processing a loan booking,” says Munoz. The integration enables Laserfiche to facilitate data transfers with the Fiserv banking platform and streamline processes.
Keep Compliance in Check
As a financial institution, D.L. Evans can’t afford to make mistakes with its record management procedures heavily regulated by FDIC rules.
Laserfiche has improved D.L. Evans’ records retention and minimizes FDIC violations by standardizing how records are kept and updated. For example, retention rules notify compliance officers when a policy document needs to be updated, and versioning lets policy reviewers know if they are working with the most up-to-date document copy.
Audits are streamlined too. Whenever the FDIC requests a records audit, D.L. Evans’ team can promptly retrieve and present the electronic documents and files in question.
“Laserfiche has brought audit time down from three weeks to two,” explains Munoz. “This is a bigger improvement than it sounds because as we’ve grown, we now have twice as many loans to audit.”
“We’ll never be truly paperless,” concedes Munoz. “But we stopped printing paper for our needs long ago.”
With Laserfiche as an integral aspect of the bank’s technology portfolio, D.L. Evans relies on Laserfiche to streamline its operations and respond to changing business needs.
“All things considered, Laserfiche saves us about $1,000,000 every year since we’ve implemented it,” says Munoz. “Laserfiche has never been a product that sits on the shelf and doesn’t get used.” Tato Munoz, IT Director, D. L. Evans Bank
