Westfield Bank’s Post

Will all branches be closed by 2033 or before? The shift to digital banking continues to grow as brick-and-mortar banking locations struggle to make ends meet. Banks and building societies have closed 5,970 branches since January 2015, at a rate of around 54 each month. This represents more than half the branches that were open at the start of 2015. #digitalbanking 👇👇👇👇👇👇

Branches matter. People matter. Technology matters. Technology doesn’t always replace the need for face to face, but it sure can add to a positive experience. #retailbanking #firsthorizon #serveothers

The already intense competition for deposits is not getting any easier. Goliath is doubling down on its commitment to branches. Other national and super-regional players without question will play the "follow the leader" game and bring branching back in vogue and into the public consciousness. Chase is satisfied with the performance of their investment in 650 (!!) new branches over the past five years and has plans to add 500 more by 2027 - in major metros including Boston. Their goal is to get from a 12% to a 20% national deposit market share, through a consistent, dedicated campaign of precise, focused field execution. As a community banker, this prospect is daunting. Large banks have a competitive advantage in their ability to deploy capital to technology investments. The refocus on branches - traditionally an advantage point for community banks at the local market level - is a strategic risk that we need to take seriously. Investing in our business cannot be one-dimensional. It is no longer prudent to prioritize exclusively technology; or to invest in only talent; or to try to win just on the merits of marketing. All of these areas, plus the physical branch and atm network, need to live in harmony in banks' strategic plans. The importance of data analytics to drive higher success ratios in these investments cannot be overstated. The stakes are high - but I'm confident that our community bank peers are up for the challenge! It has been eerily quiet lately on the "bank branches are dead" and "fintech companies will eat traditional banks alive" front. What are the futurists saying about this news? I'd love to hear all sides of the argument. Brett King, Ron Shevlin, Dave Martin, Tom McDermott, Ben Hopper, Andrew Hovet - care to weigh in? #communitybanking #deposits #marketshare #dataanalytics #branchbanking

Where is my money #idfcfirstbank We say the banking industry has gone through significant revolution, grown etc. Is this term revolution and growth limited to bottom line numbers alone, leaving the customers behind? One has to really introspect and define what these words means, these words might be meaningless if the customer pain points are not part of it. I made a IMPS transaction this morning from #IDFC Bank to #HDFC. Ideally should happen in seconds but never happened. Decided to give it 30mins before I recheck.  Fastforward 30mins, I failed to see the money in either of the accounts. That's when I called the #IDFC customer care. For a second I was impressed that I got connected one of the agents absolutely with no delays, but the surprise was overwhelmed with what happened next.  The agent could do nothing more than raising a dispute for the amount that is missing and declare a resolution time of 3 working days. I then got curious on the interest piece and enquired if I would earn the interested for the days where my money is still not visibile. The answer was sorry, we cannot do anything about it. Really !!!! After the call, I receive a feedback link where in I rated my experience bad, in no time I receive another call from so called escalation team. If the duty of the escalation team is to ensure the customers issue should be de-escalated, sorry dude you totally got it wrong. You only further escalated the call yourself. It looked like the call was made just to re-iterate the words of the agent but nothing more. Do you really need a team to do this!! I feel its fair for the customers to demand justification from the banks, especially thinking of scenarios where banks charge list of heft penalties when an individual has missed out on EMI. Are the customers not entitled to demand their rights (atleast) if not for penalty for the deficiency of service. There cannot be one sided exceptions framed that helps the banks and not the customers. Penalties should be a 2 sided action. Moral of the story - The term banking revolution merely looked like a self proclaimed action with no real benefits to the customer!! I am not sure if I would find some who could take a corrective action after seeing this post, but I understood the customer has no place within the term revolution :( #ombudsman

🏅TOP BANK: Regions was ranked one of the top 20 banks in the country in reputation + customer satisfaction, American Banker reports👇 #regions #bham #finance #business #local #bhambusiness GH #bhamnow

It's becoming more and more important for customers to have control over their personal data.🔒 Banks are focusing on prioritizing privacy and transparency in their customer relationships. https://lnkd.in/esFSd3ZW #banking #customertrust #customerloyalty #banks #insurance #marketing

Discover how we transformed complaint handling operations for a major retail bank and enabled them to resolve 90% of complaints at the first point of contact. Read our case study here - https://lnkd.in/eces6FkM #complaintshandling #customercomplaints #fpoc #complaintstechnology #retailbanking

Attention New York Metro area banking followers! Have you been following the recent developments at NYCB/Flagstar? Over the last 30 days, over 20 commercial teams have left the bank. These teams were primarily comprised of bankers from the former Signature Bank, which was acquired by NYCB/Flagstar in an FDIC-assisted transaction last year. This represents about 20-25% of the teams that NYCB/Flagstar acquired from Signature. Interestingly, the majority of the 20+ teams have ended up at NJ-based Peacock-Gladstone Bank and NY-based Dime, with Pennsylvania-based Customers Bank also benefiting from recent upheaval at NYCB/Flagstar. Customers Bank may stand to benefit the most from their new teams, despite not making as big a deal about their lift-outs as the other banks. It's worth noting that we don't expect the flow of teams from NYCB/Flagstar to end anytime soon. In fact, they may end up losing 50% or more of the Signature teams that they acquired from the FDIC. Keep your eyes peeled for further developments.

The future of #banking is online banking. The same goes with #retail #highereducation #downtowns #everythingelse. The good thing is #haircuts and #swimmingpools are here to stay :) Bank of America, Wells Fargo, & Chase shut branches as 79 banks in US close – companies ‘gamble’ while customers suffer https://lnkd.in/gdePYD4e

Standing up our Knowledge Center for the Future of Banking and Wealth Management has been exciting! We just finished a series of mystery shopping exercises at our Canadian banks, and the results have been very surprising. To be frank, it's difficult to understand how these issues, seemingly archaic in nature, continue to persist even in the year 2024. Here’s a few shocking examples that stood out: A bank's system automatically directed the delivery of newly applied credit cards to a downtown branch due to an inherent system limitation. Imagine the inconvenience this caused for an elderly woman who had to travel all the way there to collect her card. Unbelievable. Another bank required customers to open a chequing account just to review their mortgage details online. What's more, all their chequing accounts incurred a monthly fee. Even having a credit card wasn't sufficient. Unnecessary obstacles. Finally, a bank lost a client who initiated a loan application over the phone, visited the branch twice to sign the paperwork, only to be told that the branch had no knowledge of the loan's status since it was initiated over the phone. Miscommunication. And these examples only scratch the surface. In total, our investigation uncovered an astonishing 52 significant infractions and pain points. The majority centered around the client experience and the distribution of products and services - key levers in the purchasing stages for a client, with ramifications for referrals. These issues seem relatively simple to resolve with quick or manual workarounds, but the real transformation lies in making small technological changes. What interesting is collaborating with global peers and witnessing how other industry players have adopted innovative strategies for their retail banking divisions. Lloyds Bank and Santander as an example. If you're intrigued and eager to delve deeper into these pain points, or our other research, our retail banking team and I would love to chat. #FutureOfBanking #Advice #Experience #Innovation #Trends Jeffrey, Hwan, Brad, Andrea, Andrew