New Viewpointe CEO Buglioli Hints at Services Beyond Image Sharing

The new chief executive of Viewpointe Archive Services LLC is a payments-industry veteran who says he sees big potential in check-image exchange and hints there may be services the massive image archive can render beyond electronic check processing. “I joined Viewpointe because of the great opportunities,” says former banker and consultant Lou Buglioli, who officially takes office today. “We're looking at ways we can use the archive beyond [image] exchange and [image] share.” Buglioli, who's now in charge of a 5-year-old cooperative owned by five major banks that houses some 66 billion electronic check images, isn't ready to give specifics about what those new services might be, other than to point to opportunities to leverage the archive's database in risk management and in clearing and settlement “across different debit types.” Says he: “We're working with our customers identifying areas that have the greatest value.” For now, though, he stresses Viewpoint needs to stick to its knitting in the still-nascent business of converting paper checks into images on which paying banks can settle. “Foremost, we've got to deliver in image share and image exchange,” he says. To that end, Charlotte, N.C.-based Viewpointe has secured an agreement from its five bank owners?Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co., SunTrust Banks Inc., US Bancorp, and Wells Fargo & Co.?to share 100% of their check images within 18 months. That commitment, Buglioli says, will produce 2.4 billion share transactions annually by spring 2007. He says Viewpointe enabled 300,000 image-share transactions in August, up from 60,000 in July. Viewpointe?which is adding images to its collection at the rate of 100 million a day–sees a further 2 billion annual share transactions stemming from the expected participation of half a dozen other banks that are customers of the archive. Viewpointe could reach 5 billion yearly transactions within that 18-month timeline with the activity of four other banks now participating in Pointe2Pointe, the company's image exchange, Buglioli says. “We will just open the floodgates,” he says. Unlike an image-exchange network, Viewpointe does not transmit check images among banks but rather operates on the principal of “image on demand,” by which banks contribute or “share” images and call them up as needed from the archive. Buglioli comes to Viewpointe after a 35-year career that included positions at what is now Citigroup Inc., Telecredit Inc. (now Certegy Inc.), electronic-payments consulting firm Benton International, and Perot Systems (which bought Benton in 1997). He succeeds John Lettko, who left early this year to join ProxyMed Inc., a medical-claims processor (Digital Transactions News, May 25).