Gathering Momentum
By LAURENCE CORLEY
IN this country there are banks in profusion. I Some cater for narrow, if influential, sections
of the community, others cannot with the best will in the world be called anything better than `near-banks.' To the general public, however, 'the banks' means those with branches in the II:gh Street—the joint-stock banks.
The branch of one of the big joint-stock banks has long been part of the local scene.
The classical theory of the birth of banking through the Lombards and goldsmiths has no place in their lineage. They have grown from the sideline banking business of corn chandlers and seed merchants, brewers and drapers, and from private firms and companies which have set out with the sole intention of being bankers and nothing else. But in spite of this close association with everyday life the banks had in the past really only dealt with a compara- tively restricted section of the community. In recent years, however, a welcome has been ex- tended to every type of potential customer irrespective of social, financial or any other sort of class. And it is by still deeper excursions into this particular field that a considerable part of the future expansion of the joint-stock banks lies, possibly assisted by greater use of credit transfer facilities.
To achieve this has meant, and is meaning, an active branch extension plan and an even wider modernisation programme. The banks have inherited a legacy of grim buildings. Branches had sombre exteriors, dark mahogany furniture, high Dickensian desks and stools and counter grilles, which effectively restricted any happy cashier-customer relationship. It says much for the progressive spirit and enterprise of the banks that they are steadily working their way through this jungle of inconvenience. Modern bank buildings are bright, efficient, sensible and welcoming. They look none the less secure for being in some cases almost gay. Indeed in some cases they are making their own contribution to the attractiveness of a shopping centre by having display windows and thus using some of the vast publicity poten- tial of the thousands of prominent sites throughout the country. Interiors, too, have shown a marked improvement. More light, murals, paintings, sculpture and even hanging greenery (but so far not piped music!) set the trend for future bank architecture, in which the manager's room is also escaping from the austerity of the traditional banking parlour.
A few drive-in banks are in use in various parts of the country, but suitable sites and local traffic restrictions keep down the number.
Quick deposit facilities are available in some busy branches for customers wishing only to pay in cheques, and cashiers are kept free for paying private customers. All these are modest attempts to deal with a greater number of customers who wish to carry out uncomplicated transactions as quickly as possible. Wider ex- tension of what might be called 'instant bank- ing' must come with a greater banking public. In themselves, however, this' will not be suf- ficient to cope with any wide-scale use of the banks by those who have traditionally always been paid in hard cash and need a bank account for the first time.
As yet the whole question of payment of wages other than in cash still remains unanswered. Employers are naturally anxious to shift the security problem of moving large sums of pay-day cash on to the shoulders of the banks. Employees' spokemen, however, raise a num- ber of objections, real and imaginary, to paying wages in any form except the traditional pay packet, and often confuse payment of wages by cheque with transfer direct to a banking account.
From the point of view of accommodation, hours of opening and type of service this pay- ment of wages is probably the biggest prob- lem branch banking is likely to have to face in the future. Generally speaking, the largest bank branches have been in the financial and big business areas of cities and towns, and branches in the factory and industrial areas are often small and ill equipped to cope with an onslaught of some thousands of customers arriving in short peak periods. Banks are, however, actively extending into these new areas.
The extension of bank counter facilities will, of course, be considerably assisted by the cen- tralising of bank bookkeeping. The marriage between banks and computers has now been consummated and we can expect the withdrawal of the routine bookkeeping from bank branches to gather momentum in the forth- coming years. Branch managers have now accustomed themselves to having their cooking, if that is not the wrong word in such a connec- tion, no longer done on the premises. The necessity to provide every customer on demand with an up-to-date position of his account has been met, though not always in a traditional form. Bank customers, however, tend to be rather conservative. They do not take kindly to change, whether it is a new face at the cashier's till or in the manager's room, the substitution of printed statement for hand-
written passbook, an alteration of the layout of a cheque or even a modest adjustment in its size. The Chancellor of the Exchequer when opening a recent bank computer centre
said: 'If you are going to be enterprising businesses you must have enterprising cus- tomers,' and part of the work of the banks in the future must be to educate their existing customers to live both with new developments and with their new fellow customers.
A side development of the banks, which may well expand considerably over the next few years, is information service for business customers, and in particular for those looking for expansion in the export field. The banks, with their correspondents throughout the world, are extremely well placed to obtain unbiased commercial information, not only from capital cities and ports but from lesser-known, though nevertheless industrially important, areas. This information service has been a natural develop- ment from the provision of status reports and the growth of the banks' own economic de- partments.
To make its living a bank must lend. Banks in this country have but rarely publicised this fact, and at the moment it seems unlikely that they will in the immediate future be more forth- coming on this side of their activities. How- ever, with a wider depositing public and greater use of ancillary services by existing customers, more will get to know more of the banks' basic qualities and to learn that bank borrowing is'. cheap borrowing, something which will reflect to their own and to the banks' benefit.
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