By John Adams

Many financial institutions are identifying 2012 as the year they need to finally adjust their staffing approach for their branches.  With technology and other innovations driving consumers away from the branch environment, the time is ripe for an operational change.

“Richard Davis, U.S. Bancorp‘s chairman, yesterday laid out his principles for branch banking, and they deserve investigation. First, Davis said banks need to understand the changes in consumer behavior.

So what should banks do practically? Here’s Davis’s recipe:

• Shrink the teller line;
• Increase the privacy areas;
• Change your hours to make the bank more available to people when they need to come and talk about something private and personal; and
• Change the branch’s staffing composition accordingly.”

As the FMSI Teller Line Study points out, consumer trends are certainly impacting how we are all interacting with our branches.  The real delicate question to ask though is how quickly technology is changing how the population as a whole is interacting with their financial institution?  The data from the FMSI Teller Line study points out  that this change is and will be very gradual.  However, if a financial institution does nothing to address this change as Mr. Davis suggests, such as changing how they schedule their branches, they will undoubtedly eventually be seriously affected by this shift.

Excerpts taken from JJ Hornblass’s Banking Innovation blog post titled “What’s Coming in 2012: A New Approach to Branches“

“To make up for the lost profits, big banks are cutting expenses. Bank of America has said it will jettison 30,000 jobs in the next few years. Wells Fargo has said it needs to cut quarterly expenses by $1.5 billion by the end of this year, including job cuts. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, which generate a bigger share of profits from investment banking, have announced big cuts in bonuses this year.”

Two recent white papers by FMSI, The 2011 Teller Line Study and The Workforce Utilization Study, reveal the steps required for financial institutions to properly manage their workforce reductions—taking into account customer service.

Significant and sudden layoffs are in most cases a last resort for community institutions.  Layoffs can be avoided by properly managing a workforce with an outsourced workforce management solution.  Using these tools allow institutions to naturally reduce their workforce through attrition.  The in-depth reporting coupled with schedules incorporating powerful forecasting, can help managers with this month-to-month process.

Outsourced workforce business intelligence solutions, like FMSI’s The Teller Management System™, provide a streamlined online scheduling module that optimizes teller staffing based on forecasted transaction volumes.  TMS helps banks and credit unions gain better control of schedule preparation and address the need to minimize labor costs without sacrificing customer service.  On average, banks implementing TMS realize a $30,000 annual savings, per retail branch.

Excerpt taken from John W. Schoen’s MSNBC article Banks rely on lending as trading profits shrink

Don’t rely on industry averages or low-performing branches in your decision-making

by James W. Ransom

Despite the wide availability and usage by credit unions of industry data, the real forecasting power to manage branch teller operations lies in each branch’s internal metrics. Some of the most meaningful information a CU can capture is stored by the credit union’s core processor. This data, especially transaction time, transaction type and associated employee, provides direct, actionable information.

 
See the full article here: CFO Focus: Leveraging Branch Metrics

W. Michael Scott – President/CEO of FMSI

Never Lose Focus of Your Stakeholders

I am well aware of the fact that our being in business today is only possible due to our client’s continued support. We would like to recognize our first community bank client, First Financial Bank in El Dorado, Arkansas, which started with us in 1989 and has supported us ever since. Also, our very first credit union client was Northeast Credit Union in Portsmouth, New Hampshire that joined us in May 1993 and is both a TMS and LTS client today. We thank them and all our clients and we promise to continue to work diligently to provide them with continuous improvements in our products and services with outstanding customer service.  Never lose focus of what is important to your stakeholders.

Congratulations to The University of Illinois Employees Credit Union for achieving an exceptional lobby product/service interaction split.  Using the product/sell percentage breakdown as a key performance indicator can be instrumental in understanding your lobby performance.  Set a goal, measure the trend, and manage to the behaviors to obtain the desired result.  FMSI recommends a 60/40 product/service split for a high sales performing lobby.

Learn more by downloading FMSI’s Lobby Management White Paper.

Travis Credit Union Voted Best Credit Union and Best Financial Services by Local Community

VACAVILLE, CA—Service, convenience, and location of branches all helped to make Travis Credit Union the winner of the “Best of 2011” for the sixth year, according to a poll of the Vacaville Reporter readers.

“Travis Credit Union is thrilled to be named the best place to do banking in Solano County for the fifth time,” said Chairman Curt Newland, on behalf of Travis Credit Union’s Board of Directors.  “We are dedicated to serving the community and feel privileged to have the opportunity to do so.”

Travis Credit Union’s commitment to offering excellent service and good value to its members has obviously been appreciated by Solano County residents.  The credit union won in three categories ─ Best Bank (that’s not a bank), Best Credit Union and Best Financial Services.

Once a year Vacaville Reporter’s readers are offered the opportunity to participate in the Best of Solano County poll.  Readers can cast their vote for their favorite places, services, people and food. Travis Credit Union has consistently remained on top of readers’ best places to bank.

“We’re very excited to receive these awards because it is the community that decides who is the best!  In everything we do, we strive to put our members first.  We really appreciate this vote of confidence,” stated Patsy Van Ouwerkerk, president and CEO of Travis Credit Union.  “While we have received this award in the past, we never take it for granted.  At Travis Credit Union, our team works hard to be the very best and we are humbled that we would be recognized in this way again.  It’s really exciting to us and affirms that we are delivering on our promise to provide excellent service.”

Alpharetta, GA (PRWEB) January 05, 2012

Financial Management Solutions, Inc. (FMSI), provider of business intelligence solutions for banks and credit unions, announced today that Bangor Savings Bank (BSB) has implemented its Teller Management System™ (TMS).  BSB will use TMS to gain better control of branch staff scheduling while protecting high standards for customer service.

The Teller Management System™ provides a streamlined online scheduling module that optimizes teller staffing based on forecasted transaction volumes. TMS helps banks and credit unions gain better control of schedule preparation and address the need to minimize labor costs without sacrificing customer service. On average, banks implementing TMS realize a $30,000 annual savings, per retail branch.

“We wanted to limit the amount of time branch managers were spending on scheduling, which could be fairly significant in our larger branches,” said Kendra Helsor, Consumer Banking Administrative Manager at BSB.  ”We got a peek at the scheduling capabilities of TMS and got excited about its functionality and automation.”

In addition to reducing the scheduling burden on managers, Bangor Savings Bank will also rely on TMS to bring its staffing levels in line with declining year-over-year transaction volumes, without compromising service levels. “We wanted to make smarter staffing decisions and get a handle on the profitability of branches, but we had to do this carefully to maintain our high standards for customer service,” says Helsor. “FMSI helps us achieve this goal through sophisticated scheduling and reporting.”

“The pressures of a down economy, coupled with federal regulations that are reducing NSF fees and other revenue sources, are taking a significant financial toll on banks,” said W. Michael Scott, President/CEO of FMSI. “Reducing staffing levels is a sure way to eliminate excess cost, but doing so without accurate and precise information almost always leads to a drop in customer service. When banks recognize this, they discover that an automated scheduling and reporting solution such as TMS provides the support they need to optimize their workforce.”

About Bangor Savings Bank
Bangor Savings Bank, with more than $2.5 billion in assets,  offers retail banking and investment management services to Maine consumers as well as  comprehensive commercial, corporate, payroll administration, insurance, and small business  banking services to Maine businesses. The Bank, founded in 1852, is in its 159th year of service to the people of Maine, with 56 branches and on the Web at www.bangor.com.  The Bangor Savings Bank Foundation was created in 1997. Together the Bank and its Foundation invest more than a million dollars per year into the community in the form of nonprofit sponsorships, grants and partnership initiatives.

About Financial Management Solutions, Inc. (FMSI)
Located in Atlanta, GA and established in 1990, FMSI provides easy-to-use, yet sophisticated, business intelligence systems—The Teller Management System™ (TMS), The ContactCenter Management System™ (CMS), and the Lobby Tracking System™ (LTS)—that allow financial institutions to manage and staff to meet their service and sales needs. FMSI gives banks and credit unions the ability to schedule their team throughout the branch network, and to manage staff through easy to read color graphics and succinct management reports. FMSI provides performance management information exclusively to financial institutions of all sizes. Visit the company’s website at http://www.fmsi.com or call 877.887.3022 to schedule a complimentary online demonstration of any of our products.

Teller Program

An effective Teller Program can significantly enhance the performance of a teller line.  Proper implementation and ongoing management of this type of initiative is a necessity.  Retail management can expect the following from a teller program:

• Improved Service
• An Increase in Productivity
• More Sales Generated
• More Referrals

FMSI’s Teller Management System™ allows financial institutions to obtain these results through a sophisticated teller program, which provides electronic scheduling and reporting.  The retail management solution leads to:

• Quickly Identifying Teller Coaching Opportunities
• Aligning Staff to Meet Service Level Needs
• Assigning Tasks at the Right Time to Improve Sales and Referrals

Download the FMSI Teller Line study to learn more about the importance of a properly implemented teller program.

Institution Level Turnover Rates:

• 2008 – 15%
• 2009 – 9%
• 2010 – 12%

Management Turnover Rates:

• 2008 – 6%
• 2009 – 5%
• 2009 – 5%

Front-Line Staff Turnover Rates:

• 2008 – 20%
• 2009 – 19%
• 2010 – 18%

Other noteworthy results from the survey include:

• 3% of employees were hired for newly created positions, which has remained the same since 2008.
• Overall there is an average of 36.9 full-time-equivalent employees at Credit Unions surveyed.

Excerpts taken from the Claude R. Marx Credit Union Times article “CUNA Survey: Turnover Up Though Less Than Before Recession“