Co-op bank scans letter into emails

10,000 inbound letters a day will be sorted, scanned and indexed

The system will effectively turn letters into emails

Co-operative Financial Services (CFS) has signed a £12m contract with Xerox to scan inbound correspondence into an email to the appropriate recipient.

The system will process and index 10,000 inbound insurance and retail banking letters and turn them into emails.

It will use language recognition technology similar to systems used by Royal Mail and aims to improve customer response times, said Dick Parkhouse, executive director for strategy and change at Co-operative Financial Services.

"With this new approach we will not only reduce operational costs but more importantly we will deliver improved customer service," he said.

The process will use a secure wide area network to transfer the information when it has been digitised.

The six-year programme will be implemented in five stages.