Lenders

Loan Payment (Coupon) Books

The average consumer will take out an installment loan to finance a "big ticket" item, whether he's purchasing a major appliance, an automobile or a house. In the case of an automobile, a popular alternative is to enter into a lease. Either way, many lenders will supply the consumer with a booklet that contains all of the remittance advices (coupons) needed under the terms of the loan or lease. The consumer removes one coupon each month and mails it in with his payment.

Each book is unique so they are always printed on demand. The economics of producing the booklets can be made far more attractive, however, by improving imposition layout so the maximum number of coupons are printed on a single sheet of paper. The two considerations for imposition are the size of the coupon and the size of the paper.

Coupons can be any convenient size determined by the lender, subject only to the specifications of the remittance processing system that will be used to capture the payment transactions. The remittance processing system may be operated by the lender or the lender may out-source that function to a "lockbox" operator. Either way, the operator is concerned about maximizing the throughput of the remittance processing system because it directly affects the lender's cash flow and interest earnings. The faster a transaction is performed, the sooner the consumer's payment gets deposited into the lender's bank account.

Many remittance processing systems achieve their highest throughput when the coupon dimensions are relatively close to those of a personal check (2.75"x 6"). For convenience in handling both checks and coupons, however, coupons often are designed to be a slightly different size (frequently a bit taller than 2.75" and a bit under 6" in the other dimension). If the coupon itself measures slightly less than a check in the longer direction, but a strip (for stitching or binding) is added to one side with a perforation along the common edge, the total dimensions of the "combined" coupon will be around 3"x 6.125".

This size coupon can be printed 12-up on a high speed Xerox printer adapted by XSIS for Large Format paper. (If a stub is added between the strip and the coupon as a "payment record", the coupon itself must be closer to 3"x 5" for them to be printed 12-up.)

Some coupon printers produce coupon books for a variety of different products or for multiple lenders. Each job undoubtedly requires its own special stock, raising the possibility that the coupons for one product will be printed on the stock for a different product through simple human error. The XSIS Feed Assurance Feature can prevent the wrong stock from being used immediately, so no spoiled booklets are produced or get mailed to the loan recipients.