High-tech banking; Indiana banks test banking by personal computer and touch-tone phone.

For some Indiana bank customers, tastes of the future are here already. There are banks that allow customers with PCs the kind of account access formerly reserved for tellers. There are banks whose customers may transfer funds, issue stop-payment orders and pay bills using their telephones. Some Hoosier banking customers, instead of receiving an envelope stuffed with canceled checks every month, keep their desks neat with laser images of the checks they write, filed away in orderly fashion in three-ring binders.

Such technology-oriented services, the bankers say, can help the institutions run more smoothly and efficiently. Perhaps even more important, they can attract and retain customers in an age of decreasing customer loyalty.

Some of the latest innovations have been appearing in a place one might not expect: small-town Indiana. STAR Financial Group, based in Marion, this year unveiled "STARimage," a new look in bank statements that springs from advances in check-processing technology. It's so new that you can count on one hand the number of Indiana banks currently using the technology.

All STAR Financial Bank checking customers now receive with their monthly statements STARimage check pages, which are standard-size pages that each contain the laser-printed images of a dozen cleared checks. Printed below each check image is the date that check posted as well as verification of the check number and the amount paid, making it especially easy to verify the accuracy of the bank statement.

STAR is not alone among banks in its desire to stop mailing those stacks of canceled checks. Indeed, many banks offer lower-cost accounts for which checks aren't returned to the customers; if customers need copies of canceled checks, the bank can retrieve them from microfilm records. "But we felt that customers still want some form of information from the check itself," says Jim Marcuccilli, president of information-processing subsidiary STAR Financial Systems. "With imaging, we can still get customers the information they want."

STARimage is not a microfilm recording system, Marcuccilli emphasizes. It's significantly more advanced. Under the old system, checks would be sorted by employees, recorded on microfilm and then returned to customers with the monthly statements. Each check would be handled up to six times, says Greg Pence, STAR's director of marketing.

Now, when checks are presented to STAR for processing, they are loaded into a machine that sorts them and makes electronic images of both sides. The images, which are stored permanently on disk, are used to generate the laser images that customers receive with their statements. Originals are destroyed after three months, but customers can always obtain new copies from the bank. And that takes only minutes, Pence says, rather than the days that it could take to dig up a microfilm record.

STAR also uses technology to benefit some of its business customers who need to keep especially close tabs on their cash flow. The STAR Link Cash Manager and Payments and Transfers services allow businesses to connect their computers with the one at the bank via modem. "They can see all of the transactions that have gone through the bank the previous evening and know what their financial situation is," Marcuccilli says. "They can move funds from account to account or from bank to bank through the Automated Clearing House."

Companies also can pay bills electronically using the system, and can initiate preauthorized electronic payments from their customers' accounts. They can do many of the things that bank employees can do on the system, without leaving their offices or speaking with anyone at the bank.

NBD Bank is preparing to market a computer service to its Indiana retail-banking customers. NBD Express is a PC-based banking service that works in conjunction with the Prodigy on-line computer service, says Kevin McKenney, a bank vice president. "It's an add-on service to Prodigy," he says. "Its primary function is to pay bills, get balances and statement information."

Allowing easy electronic access to accounts is the goal of telephone-banking systems at a number of Indiana banks, including Fifth Third and NBD. These systems allow banking customers to perform a variety of transactions and access all kinds of information using their touch-tone phones.

"It's very user-friendly," Deena J. Whitaker, a senior vice president at Fifth Third Bank of Central Indiana, says of the Jeanie telephone-banking system. "It's extremely convenient and saves customers a lot of money in stamps and time."

Systems such as Jeanie and NBD's Payment Line allow customers to set up in advance arrangements for the bills that they pay regularly--loans, credit cards, utilities and the like. Then, by dialing into the system, they may instruct the bank to issue payments to these merchants in any amount and on any date. The bank, then, makes the payments either electronically or by printing and mailing checks.

Customers, Whitaker adds, also may check balances, verify whether specific checks have cleared, transfer funds, obtain account numbers, request copies of statements and even issue stop-payment orders, all through the telephone system. The computer walks customers through each function, offering as much or as little assistance as needed.

What kinds of high-tech banking services can we expect in the future? No one knows for sure where technology will go, but watch the TV, advises David Fronek, president of NBD's Central Indiana region. He's heard of the possibility of banking services being offered through interactive cable television sometime down the road.

Still, concludes Whitaker, don't expect to see walk-in bank branches becoming obsolete in our lifetimes. "It's still a people business. People still enjoy that contact with their banker."