In 2017 the Federal Reserve committed to the industry-wide initiative of Cash Visibility, an initiative focused on bringing greater transparency and efficiency to the cash supply chain. A lot has happened since that commitment, including the creation, test, and launch of the Federal Reserve’s FedCash E-Manifest Service.
Now is the time for financial institutions to prepare for the Federal Reserve’s best operating procedure. Is your financial institution ready for FedCash E-Manifests?
A Quick Refresher on E-Manifests
The industry took a significant step in moving toward Cash Visibility the first time the Federal Reserve electronically accepted an electronic What to Expect file. The What to Expect file contained deposit information from a financial institution that was then delivered by an armored car carrier. The outcome was essentially what is now known as the E-Manifest, an electronic manifest that would replace the paper manifest and paper process. The information received by the Federal Reserve through the E-Manifest provided the details of what would be delivered by the armored carrier, including bag number, amount of the deposit by denomination, and the financial institution’s information. The success of this step made it possible for other participants in the cash supply chain, like Rochester Armored Car, to move closer to adoption of this new operating procedure.
How the E-Manifest Service Impacts Financial Institutions
Many benefits come from removing the paper and sharing data electronically. With technology that enables the electronic exchange of data, the ability to quickly share and track data is possible. The benefits of the E-Manifest Service for the cash supply chain are many, but here are just a few benefits that financial institutions will experience.
- Compliant with the practices of the Federal Reserve Bank: By becoming E-Manifest Ready, financial institutions are in good standing with not only the Federal Reserve Bank, but an industry best practice.
- Improved transparency and tracking: The entire supply chain benefits from the ability to exchange information in a standardized way. This makes it possible to track packages throughout the supply chain.
- Accelerated service times: The transaction between armored car carriers and the Federal Reserve and the carrier’s customers will be quicker and more efficient by eliminating manual processes.
- Improved efficiency: This includes improved controls and loss prevention as well as opening the door to the possibility of automating cash management tasks.
How Rochester Is Preparing
As an active participant in the Federal Reserve’s E-Manifest Readiness Program and a member of the Cash Advisory Council, Rochester has been involved in various testing, including having the privilege of being the first armored carrier to the test the Application Programming Interface, API, connection with the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank.
Each test Rochester participates in helps with the company’s own efforts to support the Cash Visibility initiative and adoption of the FedCash E-Manifest Service. In addition to obtaining a company prefix and global location numbers (GLNs) for all its branches and cash vaults, Rochester has partnered with a fintech and invested in the necessary software development and scanning hardware.
Becoming FedCash E-Manifest Ready
While there is no mandate at this time it’s important for financial institutions to know that the FedCash E-Manifest Service will be needed to do business with the Federal Reserve soon. To prepare for E-Manifests, financial institutions need to obtain a GS1 company prefix and GLNs for each of its end points. The Federal Reserve offers support to help with this process. Through its FedCash E-Manifest Preparation Service Rochester handles the entire process of becoming FedCash E-Manifest Ready on behalf of the financial institution.
