Is Branch Transformation changing the way banking is done?
A huge buzz word right now in the financial industry has been "branch transformation." What is it? To answer this questions in short, it is moving the process of depositing to another digital channel and it is changing the way banking is being done.
While changing banking, there are some things that will stay the same. Research shows that consumers will always be looking to have the face-to-face contact with a teller. Some fear a world of banking in which everything becomes digital, in the same way that some believe that checks will go away. That is simply not the case. A study done and published in "The Future of US Retail-Banking Distribution" by Albert Bollard, Neel Doshi, and Marukel Nunez Maxwell, showed that the more that customers used the digital channels available to them the more that they wanted the face-to-face human interaction. While branch transformation is changing the way that banking is done the one thing it is NOT doing is eliminating human interaction to where we are all talking and dealing with robots in our day to day errands.
Branch transformation which is sometimes called the ITM or the Intelligent Teller Machine. This machine is similar to the deposit taking ATM with adding functionality of transactions that can be completed by a teller right at the machine itself. Currently there are not many of these deployed as it is a part of the new wave of digitally depositing. It seems to be growing at a rapid rate. CFS currently deploys the middleware between the atm and the backoffice on roughly 80% of the installed base. We are proud to be the leader in this new wave of technology emerging for banks.
If human interaction is not going away how would I see an ROI on this technology?
With this new technology, banks and credit unions are seeing that larger brick and mortar buildings with four to six tellers is not necessary. By adding these machines to a branch, you cut down on the number of tellers needed at any given branch. When adding Branch Transformation outside of the branch, you are expanding your territory and locations without having to build brick and mortar, seeing an ROI very quickly by cutting out a large chunk of overhead.
