If you haven't heard about our upcoming Mini Conf '18 - The Elephant in the Branch taking place March 26 '18 in Salt Lake City, then allow me to formally invite you now. All the details you need can be found here.
SVP, Commerce Bank, Fran Fanara is joining us on the day as one of four morning panelists. We caught up with him yesterday, as you do, and found ourselves somewhat inspired and schooled simultaneously.
Some highlights from our conversation with Fran follow
The big questions for banks and branches today are:
1. Staffing: spanning; roles, responsibilities, teams, focus, sales and promotion.
2. Have you and your team prepared for what's coming? This leads to investigating the distinction between reacting-to-change and planning-to-change and the consequences therein.
3. What are the Blue Sky possibilities available to us now inside places & spaces moving forward?
The future of bank and branches?
Edward Jones is a very interesting model for us to observe. Financial Brokers visible all over the country in bricks and mortar of 500, sometimes 600, square feet with 1 or 2 people present.
For me, I see the future of branches looking more akin to this.
The elephant in branches?
What happens to Bricks & Mortar 10 years out?
Who knows.
All the research tells us that people want to come to a branch to:
open an account
get advice
resolve issues
have reassurance that the problem is fixed
BBVA, Chase, Commerce, PNC, are actively exploring options on a branch by branch basis sure, but nobody (yet) is picking up their entire branch network and re-defining it across the board.
And with bricks & mortar comes the possibilities available because of technology.
It would be great to learn what other Financial Institutions are putting into their spaces. The America First Credit Union has an Innovation Center that will be definitely worth seeing in this regard.
