Banks Closing Drive-Thru Lanes
Shortly after the weekly poll started last week I realized a flaw in how I constructed the answers, lumping walk-up ATMs and drive-up ATMs together as one:
Q: You’ve got a check to deposit into your checking or savings account, pick your two preferred methods from the following list:
ATM 45 [28.85%]
Lobby teller 39 [25%]
Drive-thru teller 34 [21.79%]
Smartphone app 32 [20.51%]
Mailing check to my financial institution 5 [3.21%]
N/A — I don’t have a checking/savings account 1 [0.64%]
Had I broken the ATM answer down into the two types as I did with tellers the results would’ve been different. Still, the results are interesting. In a few years I think we’ll see smartphone apps increasingly used for depositing increasingly rare checks.
For decades banks razed buildings to build drive through lanes. Decades ago these lanes were full of cars but now fewer and fewer use them. Last year Bank of America began closing drive-up teller service at some locations.
In the latest move to scale back its branches, Bank of America is ending drive-up teller service at some locations, including in the Charlotte region.
The reason? Too few people are using the drive-thru lanes, the bank says.
The move comes as the Charlotte-based lender is in cost-cutting mode, closing branches nationwide and shrinking its number of automated teller machines. (Bank of America to close drive-through teller lanes)
The Bank of America branch at 800 Market still has drive-thru lanes, but their website indicates the branch hours will change on August 4th. Will they close then? Don’t be fooled, the banking industry is changing big time:
Drive-through teller stations, once promoted as a convenience for the after-work crowd wanting to keep Bob Dylan songs playing while depositing their paychecks, are losing some of that traffic to mobile apps. As consumers increasingly use self-service channels from wherever they wish, financial institutions are reimagining their physical footprints, including drive-ups, to adjust. (American Banker)
The lobby branch of Bank of America at 100 North Broadway will close in November, according to their website. They surveyed their customers:
Almost two-thirds of consumers (62%) have at least tried to use mobile banking. The most common activities performed using mobile banking are account balance monitoring and statement viewing. Bank of America now has over 15 million active mobile banking users who access their accounts on a mobile device over 165 million times per month, according to SVP and mobile solutions executive Marc Warshawsky. This number is growing by more than 200,000 customers per month.
However, visits to bank branches are still the preferred method for managing accounts. Around 84% of respondents have visited a bank branch over the last six months. And 23% of the respondents said that they complete the majority of their banking transactions at a branch. About half (47%) of the respondents said that they use the bank’s mobile app or website as a preferred method for certain tasks. (Forbes)
When I deposit a check via ATM I don’t like having to use an envelope, the newer ATMs that read/scan the check as you deposit it are much more 21st century. I’ll revisit this in five years.
— Steve Patterson
Aside from contributing to less personal, human-to-human interaction, technology is, and will continue to have, a devastating impact on blue collar jobs. What can be done about that I don’t know, since that genie has already left the bottle.
I appreciate your optimism, but what’s happening with a couple of downtown locations is being countered by ongoing new construction in the suburbs and in newer parts of the city (along Manchester in Des Peres and Chippewa and Lansdowne in south city come to mind). Banks are like any other retailer, they adjust the products and services offered at each location to match the realities of what is used and what is not used – see Macy’s closing downtown and staying open in suburban malls. Yes, banking is changing; no, drive-thru’s are not going away, especially in the suburbs. They may be switching from humans to ATM’s, but people still like being able to stay in their cars. What’s happening downtown may just be reflecting a shift to more business being transacted outside of “bankers’ hours”, by people doing their banking closer to their suburban homes instead of over their lunch hours, along with driving being a lot tougher downtown.
I wasn’t clear, the larger national trend is moving toward providing ATMs for bank customers who wish to stay in their cars, I don’t know of any St. Louis banks that have shuttered their drive-thru teller lanes — yet.
The closures cited in this article are rural/suburban — not urban core. http://www.thestate.com/2013/08/20/2931806/bank-of-america-to-close-drive.html
The two local examples you cited, 100 N Broadway and 800 Market, are both very urban.
I looked up the 800 Market location because I knew it has drive thru lanes. The N. Broadway branch is only 4 blocks away.
I just now reviewed the BoA branches in the greater St. Louis area, many branches all over the region are getting new hours on August 4th.
And looking at the locator for Columbia, SC – http://locators.bankofamerica.com/locator/locator/LocatorAction.do . . – it looks there are 40 BoA branches and ATM’s within a 12 mile radius of downtown Columbia, including the 3 locations in the article. What I (we?) don’t know is if BoA took over / merged with another bank, there, and had redundant locations close to each other. Yes, banking is evolving, and yes, more and more business is being done online, but I don’t see a brick-and-mortar presence going away anytime soon, just changing and evolving. Standalone ATM drive-thru’s (like the one on Chippewa west of Hampton that replaced the IHOP) are a fairly recent trend, and will likely be seen more often, but there will always be transactions that are handled better / more easily with face-to-face contact.
I too don’t see the lobby teller going away, but I do think we’ll see more drive-thru lanes being closed.