Long Island Financial Briefs: May 12, 2006

Long Island Business News, May 12, 2006 by David Reich-Hale

Sterling sees scanner as selling success

Sterling Bancorp says it has the great equalizer - and it can sit on your desk.

The New York-based bank, which has one branch on Long Island, has launched the Remote Deposit Service. That, it says, makes it unnecessary for Sterling to have a branch around the corner.

By using a desktop scanner provided by the bank, customers can scan checks and have the money go straight into an account. A trip to the bank is not necessary.

We might be a smaller bank, but we can now say that our closest location is your desk, said Howard Applebaum, executive vice president and senior lending officer for Sterling National Bank. We've installed 18 of these already, with another 12 scheduled to go in over the next couple of weeks.

Sterling has 12 branches, though its only Long Island location is in Great Neck. It also has one branch in New Jersey and one branch in Westchester.

In all these locations, the deposit service is a great selling point, Applebaum said.

He added that Sterling will continue to slowly expand its branch network, with a location in Woodbury set to open this month.

We've identified Long Island as a real growth market, he said. It's a very fertile opportunity for us. We do a tremendous amount of mortgage originations there.

Sterling does $1 billion in total originations.

Great Neck is a good location, but it is barely on Long Island, it's almost eastern Queens, Applebaum said. So we have to expand, though it's not urgent for us, because we're not a retail bank.

A location in Farmingdale is possible, though he said no decision has been made on where future branches would be based.

Online IRS

The Internal Revenue Service said that the recently completed 2006 tax filing season set a series of records, highlighted by 70 million tax returns nationwide being filed electronically this year and home computer usage surging 18 percent.

Through April 21, nearly 4.1 million New Yorkers filed electronically, a 29 percent increase over the same period last year. New Yorkers have also achieved a significant increase in self- prepared home computer electronic filings.

A record number of New York taxpayers filed electronically through their home computers, said Kevin McKeon, an IRS spokesman. So far this year, 744,000 New Yorkers filed electronically through their home computers, a 20-percent increase from 645,000 at this point last year.

Also, the IRS said that through April 21, it had received 70 million returns through IRS e-file, up 6 percent from the same time last year.

Almost 20 million taxpayers filed from a home computer, up 18 percent from the same time last year and almost 3 million more than for all of 2005. The IRS will continue to receive returns filed from home computers until Oct. 16.

By April 21, the IRS had issued 85 million refunds, averaging $2,237 per refund.

For those who haven't received a refund yet, go to the IRS Web site and click on the Where's my refund link. Your answer is there.

Healthy workers

Two-thirds of executives see a link between a health plan, employee health and workforce productivity, according to a new PricewaterhouseCoopers survey.

On the flip side, only 10 percent believe there is no connection.

Moreover, 76 percent see a link between their employees' health status and their productivity, including 42 percent seeing a great deal of linkage.

Because these executives see a connection between their company health benefit plan, employee health and workforce productivity, they have a vested interest in maintaining and improving employee health, said Robert Sturm, Long Island technology industry leader for PricewaterhouseCoopers, in a statement. There also may be a connection between providing healthcare information and improved workforce health.

Most large companies give workers choices within their health care plan. Eighty-two percent of surveyed companies offer their employees choices in their health care plan.

Sixty-four percent of surveyed companies currently offer their employees programs and incentives for improving their health and wellbeing. But only 19 percent of these describe these programs as strong or above-average. Thirty-nine percent provide health care data to employees, but among these only 36 percent measure employee satisfaction with the data.

PricewaterhouseCoopers' Management Barometer surveyed 135 chief financial officers and managing directors at U.S.-based companies.