The banking industry has undergone dramatic changes in recent years, and some of the most important shifts have touched on the evolving role of the branch. Online banking and mobile payments now augment many activities formerly taking place in the branch, and omni-channel interactions with financial services organizations have become commonplace.
And yet, despite the increasingly digitalization of banking, there is a strong market for automating traditional manual bank processes. Teller cash recyclers, which count, store and authenticate cash for tellers, are one of the key technologies being implemented. In fact, according to research presented during a recent webinar hosted by ARCA, more than 128,000 cash recyclers were deployed in 2016, a number expected to grow to more than 165,000 by 2021.
A big driver for the strong demand for cash recyclers is the re-engineering of the retail branch with an emphasis on a more open environment replacing traditional roped-off teller lines and the growing importance of the universal banker. Cash recyclers make open teller pods possible by assuming the manual task of counting and dispensing money far faster—and more accurately—than human tellers can do.
Instead, the teller’s role now is being redefined in a very important and transformative way, according to Tristan Smith, automated product support manager at Arvest Bank. “With transactions on the decline, we needed to figure out a way to service our customers better, take more opportunities when we had that face-to-face time, and also be able to potentially take advantage of things like universal bankers, teller pods and smaller bank footprint,” he said.
Taking the cash-handling requirement away from the teller and automating it means tellers have more time for direct interaction with customers. In this new paradigm, tellers literally have more “face time” with customers— engaging personally with the customer, instead of looking down at a counter, silently counting out money while the customer waits. There’s a lot of missed opportunity for customer engagement in that traditional process.
This webinar will you help you understand a few core principles when evaluating and deploying cash recyclers:
- Understand the branch requirements.
- Select the best method to seamlessly and reliable integrate the technology into your branch network.
- Review internal processes, and be ready to make changes that will result in staff buy-in to this automated approach.
- Ask your potential provider to do an in-branch return-on-investment analysis to determine if a cash recycler is the right solution for your unique needs.