Digitizing Paper Intensive Processes In Banks Using OCR Scanner

30 Apr 2018

With soaring customer expectations and mobility, the key trends in the 21st century, banks are also transforming fast. They are now embracing latest technology to render a transparent customer service as well as to remain online 24 x7. Most of the banks have already followed the digital route to sustain themselves in a competitive environment. The idea is to digitize the paper-intensive processes which are too many in traditional banks. While cutting-edge scanners are available at a hefty price to scan and convert documents into digital documents, there are portable OCR scanners that accomplish the same inexpensively.

Now, what exactly is an OCR? Well, OCR is an abbreviation for Optical Character Recognition. Some mobile apps work as a scanner by using OCR technology. Such apps can scan documents like ID cards, driving licenses, visas, and passports within a few milliseconds. Such scanners are now in widespread use acrossfinancial institutions because of the following reasons.

Improves visibility of banking data

Although there are countless advantages of OCR scanners, the foremost is the improvement of banking data visibility by converting them into digital documents. Authorized bank officers can thus search and find the documents which not only improves the visibility of data but also eliminates the risk of errors due to manual typing of the data. Enhanced visibility also aids the senior management officers in making informed decisions with an ability to access crucial data of any of their branches.

Prevents loss or damage of documents

Sometimes, bank professionals loseor misplace the original documents submitted by the customers. When such incidents happen, a bank's reputation is affected severely. However, such things happen on a frequent basis. Sometimes, original documents kept by banks get damaged due to unforeseen incidents such as a fire outbreak.

An OCR scanner mitigates such risks to a considerable extent by quick digitization of original documents. The process of storing documents in a digitized format on a secured cloud server makes it easier to track and find any vital document within a small duration. The overall operational efficiency is increased manifold by digitizing paper-intensive processes in banks.

Moreover, now the capabilities of an OCR scanner is available in a mobile app which banking professionals can install on their mobile devices to carry out scanning even in an offline mode. Such OCR scanning apps are relatively affordable as they use the device camera to accurately scan the documents and then store them on a cloud server with end-to-end encryption. One can also go for a web interface of such scanner that they can run on a computer system at a small monthly fee.