The banking industry is reconsidering the old perception that physical branches are a burden which should be jettisoned, and is realising that there is still a lot in branches which remains to be exploited.
This is the view of Simon Rubin, NCR VP for marketing in the EMEA region, who visited SA this week on the local leg of transaction solutions group NCR`s international road show.
NCR, which is represented in SA by Altron company National Data Systems, provides such products as self-service terminals, financial imaging solutions, data warehousing, retail automation solutions and computing platforms.
According to Rubin, many transactions at branch level can be automated as self-service transactions through kiosks and self-service terminals even within the branches themselves.
He says transactions banks think are their own are in fact not, since there are other players who want those transactions for their profitability.
As an example, he cites the 7-Eleven retail chain in the US, which has rolled out devices allowing customers to buy tickets, cash cheques and conduct a host of other transactions.
"Thirty percent of people in the US are unbanked, but they still get their wages paid as cheques every week or two weeks, so 7-Eleven is offering cheque cashing facilities.
"They charge 2% to 6% of the cheque`s face value. You don`t have to do too many transactions a week to justify that investment. Put ticket buying and other facilities on top of that and it makes a lot of sense," he adds.
Rubin says banks still have the costs of handling physical instruments such as cash, cheques and deposit slips. NCR is investing a large part of its research and development in that area as it believes it represents a huge opportunity.
Automating through self-service is affordable and the opportunity exists to do that.
Adonis Papaconstantinou, NCR financial solutions division VP for the Middle East and Africa, cites Spanish bank Caja Madrid, which is planning to migrate 70% of its branch transactions to the self-service arena, and is engaged in a large-scale pilot project in this regard.
Papaconstantinou says what banks want is to be able to set up financial services boutiques with 24-hour access, connected to the office-hour bank branch. These could incorporate bar code scanners, small media dispensers, coin deposits, multifunction ATMs and other facilities, offering both traditional banking as well as other products such as insurance.
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