News

Who's who: Jim Walker

Though the office occupied by the ATM manager at many financial institutions comes equipped with a revolving door, Jim Walker's not going anywhere. Walker has led PNC Bank's ATM program for the past decade, which makes him something of an industry senior statesman.

May 23, 2002

Though the office occupied by the ATM manager at many financial institutions comes equipped with a revolving door, Jim Walker's not going anywhere. Walker has led PNC Bank's ATM program for the past decade, which makes him something of an industry senior statesman.

Jim Walker

As PNC's senior vice president of ATM banking, Walker has orchestrated lucrative deals with major shopping malls, convenience store chains and universities. Martin Evancoe, PNC's senior vice president of consumer e-business, called Walker a master negotiator.

Art of the deal

"He won't make a decision based on partial knowledge. He understands all areas of the ATM business, and he has a remarkable ability to get the details – more than any other person I know," Evancoe said. Drawing on his encyclopedic knowledge of vendors such as armored car companies, Evancoe said, "(Walker) doesn't do bad deals."

Les Riedl, a senior vice president at Atlanta-based consultancy Speer & Associates who has known Walker for 10 years, said that while other financial institutions seemed fairly opportunistic in their site selection, Walker always had a long-term strategy.

"Now that the industry is starting to shake out a little bit, PNC is benefiting from the fact that Jim established a solid foundation when it didn't really seem to matter," Riedl said. "He was strategic in the types of locations he wanted and the types of business relationships he expected from those locations."

PNC's network, at 3,300 machines, is one of the country's largest bank-owned fleets. More than 2,400 of those ATMs are at non-branch locations. Walker said PNC strives to be number one in ATMs in its primary markets, including Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware.

Scenes from a mall

Because of exclusive relationships with real estate powerhouses such as the Rouse Company, Walker said PNC has ATMs at more than 300 of the country's 1,500 enclosed shopping malls. "And we hope to be in a few more," he said.

Before surcharging hit in 1996, most malls contracted with local banks to provide ATMs as a customer service. Early on, Walker saw the potential to combine service with profit and locked up contracts with national mall management companies like Rouse.

"The deals we dreamed up made us the exclusive providers in those malls, which gave us more control," Walker said. "We pay top rent, but hopefully if we do it right, we have something left over when we're done."

Malls are profitable sites, especially those with only one ATM provider. "People never seem to have enough money when they get there," Walker said.

No nonsense

That no-nonsense approach to site selection has served Walker well in his two decades of managing ATMs for PNC and, before that, in the same role at Philadelphia's Provident Bank.

PNC has contracts with several prominent convenience store chains, including Wawa, Quik Chek and Turkey Hill. C-stores are desirable because their customers are creatures of habit, Walker said.

"A customer might go to Kmart three times this week, then not go for another three weeks," he said. "But c-store customers tend to stop in on a regular basis and establish behavior patterns. If they come into the c-store regularly to do something else, there's a good chance they'll also use the ATM there on a regular basis."

The second ATM Walker ever had installed, while still at Provident, was at a children's hospital right next to the University of Pennsylvania campus. College students proved to be a nearly perfect audience for ATMs, Walker said. "They adopt quickly to change, and they always seem to be in a hurry."

PNC still has a strong relationship with the University of Pennsylvania, as well as with other colleges in the state, including Penn State, Robert Morris College and Duquesne University. In addition to ATMs, PNC has branches on some campuses and runs card programs for some schools, issuing student ID cards that include ATM/debit functionality and sometimes providing processing as well.

Many Pennsylvania-schooled students remain in the state, Walker said, so colleges are a good place to recruit customers.

Hometown hero

Walker shares the students' apparent love of the area and, in particular, his hometown of Philadelphia. It was his desire to stay put that led Walker to accept a job with Provident Bank. After graduating from Bucknell University with a degree in electrical engineering in 1966, Walker began selling bank equipment – though not ATMs – for IBM. A key account was Provident, which he called "one of the best-run banks around in those days."

Relocation was a common fate for employees of IBM, which some colleagues joked stood for "I've Been Moved," Walker said. Uninterested in moving, he accepted a job running Provident's data center in 1975.

He was moved to Provident's retail area because of his sales background and ended up running its ATM program. After Provident merged with PNC in 1982, Walker continued to manage ATMs on the East Coast and took over the entire program in 1990.

Walker doesn't regret his decision. Both his and wife Sophia's families are based in the Philadelphia area, and he prefers a social life that's not centered entirely around the office. Many of his friends are members of Walker's country club, where he enjoys serving as a member of a volunteer management team. Two daughters are nearby, one in Philadelphia and the other (who will deliver Walker's first grandchild in July) in Boston.

To indulge his love of the outdoors, he golfs in summer, skis in winter and jogs year-round. "I enjoy sports where you play against yourself," he said.

But he plays against other financial institutions and independent deployers in the ATM arena. "There's not a lot of new places you can go in the off-premise world, so it's all about replacing the incumbent," Walker said.

With him at the helm, that doesn't seem likely to happen to PNC. "You don't want to give a customer any reason to leave you," Walker said. "If you're going to pay more, pay more now. Don't let that contract expire."