Pioneering Virtual Banking

Challenge

For over a century BrandBank has been a major force in North Georgia. In 2012 the $1.25 billion regional bank sought to expand its retail footprint without the high cost of traditional brick and mortar branch construction and related staffing costs.

Solution

BrandBank engaged Ascension to help the organization develop a cost-effective retail growth strategy.

To address this challenge Ascension first conducted a multi-year strategic analysis of BrandBank’s customer base to better understand key metrics including profitability, product mix, and market segmentation.

Next, Ascension developed alternative positioning platforms for use in primary research designed to help evaluate several retail growth strategies under consideration. Ascension managed the entire research process.

The research revealed strong customer interest in virtual, teller-less banking kiosks powered by the latest in remote technologies. Acting on the insights form the research, Ascension then played a key role identifying a major technology partner that could provide the virtual teller kiosks to BrandBank.

Impact

The initiative resulted in the development of BrandExpress – the first network of interactive, full service remote community banking kiosks in the country.

Through BrandExpress innovative banking kiosks offer customers real-time, face-to-face interaction with bank service specialists. Bank representatives work virtually to help customers open new accounts, make deposits, cash checks, execute withdrawals, enroll in online banking, and make remote payments.

The BrandExpress virtual teller program has proven to be a powerful new customer acquisition and service mechanism for BrandBank.

The 10 deployed kiosks generate over 1 billion/year in new account opening at far lower cost than traditional retail branches.