Blog
A branch too far …
May 9, 2014 by Richard Buckle — Founder and CEO, Pyalla Technologies, LLC
Of late I have been in discussions with vendors engaged in providing security solutions, and the image that has kept coming up is that of castles. The picturesque ones complete with moats, drawbridges, watchtowers, etc.
Castles convey the idea of security — of noblemen behind high impregnable walls. Walking the streets of downtown Sydney as a child, I always had a sense of the impregnability banks projected. Indeed, it was a model of the Commonwealth Bank head office that was distributed as a piggy bank, though mine never seemed to collect much money.
It has always been important for banks to project a fortress-like image, much as European castles attempted to do. Banks had to look impregnable, otherwise we wouldn’t trust them with our money. Or, so the story goes …
Today, most of us don’t even know where our bank’s head office is located, nor do we need to be impressed with masonry foundations, iron bars and vault-like doors. We don’t visit the head office — now are we about to stop visiting the branch as well?
For anyone involved in the payments industry, watching the value consumers place on ATMs, it’s becoming a tad paradoxical.
I want to use an ATM with a Big Bank label I trust but I couldn’t care less what the Big Bank’s branch office looks like or even where it’s located. I know my opinions fly in the face of recent data for my demographic, but on this particular point, I am on the side of generation X and Y, the younger members of our society.
To paraphrase Sinatra, when it comes to relationships with Big Banks, then “yes, I‘ve had a few” … but nothing ever came from them.
If I needed money for a car, the dealership seemed to have access to multiple banks and I just picked the cheapest. Mortgages? I used a broker, and why not? Savings? Again, I turned to a specialist firm that was also a brokerage — only an idiot would tuck money away in a bank earning peanuts.
So even at my age, why would I ever wander into a branch?
Even when I do drive to a branch office it’s just to access a drive-through ATM. The experience is not something I look forward to, and this winter it was worse. The snow covered the concrete gutter adjacent to the ATM and as I left the branch, I clipped it and ruined a perfectly good wheel! If I never have to visit a branch again, I sure won’t lose any sleep worrying about it.
I am an unabashed ATM guy — I love the darn things. I deposit checks and I get cash. I don’t want to talk to anyone and I am not interested in coupons. “Just the basics, ma’am”, to paraphrase Dragnet’s Sgt. Joe Friday.
All of this brings me around to a recent article, “Do Big Banks Hate Neighborhood Branches?” It got me wondering. The author, Jim Marous, wrote:
With more electronic channels and improved capabilities in those channels, consumers should visit branches less often, And if they visit branches less often, they may be willing to tolerate longer travel times to the branch … It doesn’t appear any banks are operating from a premise that consumers in the future will be willing to travel farther to visit their branch (presumably because they need to do so less frequently).
During my last trip to Sydney, I stopped by a large mall in the southern suburb of Miranda. Inside, I came across a bank branch office and it stopped me dead in my tracks.
For a while, I wasn’t sure it was a branch — there was a child’s play area, coffee and an adult’s rest area. Subtly built into the walls and tables were bank self-service terminals of various types, some of which I wasn’t sure what was being provided. Then again, I might have just been looking at the latest antipodean cappuccino machine — they are very forward-thinking down under.
Perhaps the big question today is not so much the distance we have to travel to a branch, but how well it’s integrated with our environment. For some time now I have been thinking that churches should think of anchoring major malls. But if we are to see a return to village life, albeit of the mall variety, perhaps it’s not churches that need to anchor malls, but Big Banks!
Clearly, such a presence would be the complete opposite of what many of us are used to and definitely a far cry from castles of the past. Any semblance of something that’s rock solid and impenetrable goes out the window (or down the corridor).
But in a totally electronic world where every smartphone and tablet is a banking terminal, if someone will watch the kids while I shop and then let me sit down with a hot latte, I’m all for it. I may want to return and possibly, in time, they might even get to know me!
Isn’t this then what branch banking is all about? Relationships?
At a time when so many of us have no idea why we need a bank, perhaps such an outreach might woo us back. Maybe someone from the branch will ask me what is it I would like a branch to provide — that is, apart from an ATM.
About Richard Buckle
Richard Buckle is the founder and CEO of Pyalla Technologies, LLC. He has enjoyed a long association with the Information Technology (IT) industry as a user, vendor, and more recently, as an industry commentator, thought leader, columnist and blogger. Richard participates in the HPE VIP Community where he is part of their influencer team.
