Are Big Branches In Your Future?
Posted by George Pasley on November 7, 2007
Both Jim Bruene at NetBanker and Ron Shevlin at Marketing ROI recently discussed the value of the necessity of branches. Interesting enough, I spoke with a co-worker about the same thing recently.
I’ve noticed that we only have a few branches that have a constant flow of traffic. For others, it depends on the day of the week. The busy days seem to be mostly on pay days. One of our VPs even made a comment of maybe closing some branches and going with larger full service branches.
I actually think that is a good idea. I don’t recommend closing the other branches however. Converting them to drive/walk up branches would be a lot better. Also, it’s less expensive to have a drive up only branch and you could put them in more locations. Most people that come to these branches just want to make a quick deposit or cash a check.
Sending customers to full service branches makes it easier to sell them other services. They are more open to that investment referral when the investment rep is based in that office. Most people aren’t going to come back later but they may stay a bit longer if they’ve already allocated time to go to the branch.
Depending on the bank’s strategy, branches can be vital to their success. Lots of big, expensive branches may not be the best move to make. But everyone can’t be ING either.
