Market correction for share forms

Computershare, a financial systems and share registry service provider is implementing an imaging technology solution to deal more effectively with the millions of shareholder forms the company receives during public floats and demutualisations such as the recent AMP and TAB floats.

The new system will enable Computershare to achieve a substantial increase in its capability to process shareholder applications, updates and proxy votes.

The system will be based on BancTec's ImageFIRST DataCapture solution and is expected to be implemented by the end of 1998.

The image technology will capture a digital image of the forms being processed, for automated details entry and checking against pre-set validation rules. Shareholder forms will be scanned at high speed with S-Series scanners and the system has the ability to recognise handwriting on the forms, process manual corrections, consolidate the information and deliver it to Computershare's host processing system.

If the details do not pass a rule-based validation or do not match with known information about the shareholder, the system presents the images of items to an operator for verification of correction.

This error-checking function will improve accuracy by cutting down the number of incorrect details being updated to shareholder accounts.