Self-service How-to Guide Financial Self-Service and the Automation Revolution
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Overview
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Financial institutions are changing. The branch, once considered a cost center, is now viewed as a vital customer hub — a focal point of the banking experience.
By incorporating self-service within the branch, FIs can complement the services tellers and other staff provide while meeting the needs of a broad range of customers and members. Those who prefer self-service can bank on their own; those who prefer more assistance can go to a teller.
It’s all part of branch optimization, and the shift is occurring throughout the world, albeit at different rates. In Western markets, such as the United States and Europe, where banking infrastructures are more established, migration to full branch automation has been slower than in developing markets, such as Asia-Pacific and Africa.
In those developing markets, where telecommunications and networking infrastructures are just now being constructed, not replaced, branch optimization is accelerating at a rapid pace, and branches are being designed with automation in mind.
The financial benefits associated with branch optimization, which leans on branch automation, where total cost of ownership and customer benefit are concerned, are unmistakable, and both are expected to influence the branch of the future.
Branch optimization includes self-service, assisted self-service, service-oriented architecture and cash optimization. It also includes things like radio-frequency identification technology and enterprise-wide software solutions that integrate all of an FI’s banking channels.
Branch optimization is all-inclusive, and its definition is evolving to comprise more than what it did 10 years ago. And, in the future, its definition is likely to include more than it does today.
According to an August 2005 report from Boston-based consultancy Celent LLC, U.S. FI branches must alter their purpose if they expect to thrive. Decreases in check transactions, for instance, will force FIs to build their branches around service and sales. Celent bases that theory on the estimation that check-related transactions will drop from 364 per day per branch in 2002 to a mere 178 by 2010.
Overall, Celent expects branch transactions to drop from 11.9 billion to 8.9 billion over that same eight-year period.
In its report, “Branch Boom: Folly or Forethought? Disentangling the hype from the reality,” Celent says: “The banks that will excel over the next five years will: walk the talk (e.g., hire people with retail sales experience), believe top down (from the upper echelons to the new-hire teller), harness technology with appropriate reins, and create cost-effective branch networks and wring out excess capacity.”
This publication was sponsored by Wincor Nixdorf, whose generosity enabled us to provide it to you at no change.
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Overview
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| Introduction
| Free Download
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