Wells Fargo Becomes Viewpointe Member and Owner
WELLS FARGO MAKES STRATEGIC INVESTMENT IN VIEWPOINTE AND SIGNS LONG TERM AGREEMENT TO UTILIZE IMAGE ARCHIVE AND IMAGESHARE™ SERVICES
PHOENIX, ARIZ. AND NEW YORK– January 10, 2005 – Viewpointe and Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) announced today that Wells Fargo has taken an ownership position in Viewpointe and concurrently signed a long-term agreement to utilize Viewpointe’s national check image archive. In addition, Wells Fargo will leverage the archive service to participate in Viewpointe’s unique “on demand” image exchange service, ImageShare™.
As a result, Wells Fargo will join Viewpointe’s other board members: J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Bank of America, US Bancorporation, SunTrust Bank, and International Business Machines as an owner in the company. Terms of the investment were not disclosed.
Viewpointe’s check image services will provide Wells Fargo efficient ways to store, retrieve, and share check images with other organizations. The Viewpointe national archive provides a technology foundation enabling Wells Fargo to complete its enterprise-wide image strategy in a post-Check 21 environment.
“Our investment in Viewpointe reflects our belief that image sharing, rather than image movement among individual banks, is the most effective way to improve efficiency and service quality. We believe Viewpointe has tremendous potential to play an even bigger role in the future payments arena as it expands services and gains additional customers,” stated Webb Edwards, president of Wells Fargo Services.
John Lettko, chairman and CEO of Viewpointe added, ""Wells Fargo’s decision to become an owner and member of Viewpointe is a tremendous endorsement of Viewpointe’s service offering and on demand model for check image processing. Wells Fargo is well known for their payments leadership in the industry and they will add significantly to the strategic direction of the company.”
The addition of Wells Fargo grows the number of check images stored in the Viewpointe national archive to over 25 billion annually. Lettko continued, “We can now provide even greater economies of scale for our members and assist the industry in employing a more efficient, on-demand model for image processing.”
William Chenevich, vice chairman of US Bancorporation and Viewpointe board member stated, “US Bank and Wells Fargo have a large volume of checks that can be digitally shared within Viewpointe. Their decision to participate in Viewpointe simplifies the process and increases our transactional savings in an image vs. paper check processing environment.”
Bank of America Chief Technology, Service and Fulfillment Executive and Viewpointe board member Barbara Desoer added, “Banks benefit when we speed up the transition between paper processing and image processing – having more partners does that. Wells Fargo’s ownership in Viewpointe helps all participating banks reduce check collection expense.”
Tim Sullivan, CIO of SunTrust and Viewpointe board member commented, “SunTrust is one of the first banks to clear checks electronically through ImageShare™ and the addition of Wells Fargo expands the number of checks we can efficiently process.”
“Viewpointe’s members are committed to creating more efficient payment capabilities. Wells Fargo’s decision to join Viewpointe will energize industry momentum in the transition to image processing of checks,” added Austin Adams, CIO of JP Morgan Chase & Company and Viewpointe board member.
About Viewpointe
Viewpointe LLC is the leading provider of check image and “Check 21” related services to the Nation’s top financial institutions. Viewpointe operates the largest information archive in the world and provides access to over 2 billion new check images each month for its customers including, Bank of America, BB&T, First Horizon National Corp., Harris Bank, HSBC Bank USA, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., National City Corporation, SunTrust Bank, U.S. Bancorp, Wells Fargo, and Zions Bancorporation. For more information about Viewpointe and its services, please visit www.viewpointe.com.
About Wells Fargo
Wells Fargo & Company is a diversified financial services company with $422 billion in assets, providing banking, insurance, investments, mortgage and consumer finance to more than 23 million customers from more than 6,000 stores and the internet (wellsfargo.com) across North America and elsewhere internationally. Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. is the only “Aaa”- rated bank in the United States.