Branches To Be Used By Huge Banks To Satisfy Customers

The Bank of Toronto-Dominion has made the decision to close down ten of their branches from their retailer footmark in the country this year. The minor decrease by the bank speaks of the volumes from the huge bank attachment that still have their networks widespread. At the end of 2015, there were 1,165 bank branches in Canada that TD took control of. They said the cuts will not take up much, even though most of the client’s dealing with big banks are taken care of by the branches, the cut will be no more than 1 per cent.

Terri Currie, the group head of Canadian Personal Banking said that the branches play a very important role and they will not be hindered from continuing to do so. The challenge faced by the huge bank are the bank branches and the additional logo and other marketing strategies to make substantial advertising value available. This is not the right time for the banks as they are still trying to cut down on cost and deal with rivals that aren’t faced with legacy problems.

Major financial technology company, such as Robo-Advisers, digital “branchless” banks and Virtual creditors think it is better to operate without branches as they believe they will have an upper hand over well-known competitive companies. TD, and many other huge banks think that branches should acclimatize and ditch the old format.

Banks are competing with little branches that are meant to offer advice as clients use their phones and computers to settle bills, do transferring of funds and make payment. Ms. Currie said that banks are making the best use of good locations for their customers.

Due to the experiments and long-term lease faced by the bank, this may take some time to come through. A third of TD branches are already seeing the turnaround ever since the shift took place three years ago. Traditional banking is facing a threat by the latest technology as major banks are exploring similar changes.

Tangerine, a digital banking support owned by Scotiabank attends to two million clients, which is 1,000 to 2,000 less employees per worker. This is a key benefit of branchless banking, says Brian Porter, the CEO of NovaScotia Bank. The CEO told the students at Ivey Business School at the University of Western Ontario that Tangerine is exactly what the bank needs in the years to come.

In the past one year and half, the bank has started to cut down on their branch numbers by more than 30 or 3 percent, hoping to lessen their branch footprint. They will still cut down on 50 more branches, which will increase the rate to 5 percent. Ms. Currie overlooked TD’s technology dealing before any assumption was made her present role at the beginning of 2016, saying TD branches still had 25 percent of financial trades and believes that it is important for interaction with clients who practice digital or virtual banking.

There are many ways the customers do transactions, one of which includes digital devices. This means not a lot of them will be in for branch or digital only, said Ms. Currie. The younger generations are the major users of digital devices, and people are always finding means to bank from any location, at any time and exactly how they want it, with the help of their phone, ATM machines, online banking and branches which can be of service to them. The problem is how to ward off fintech rivals that can plea with specified online services that might probably be more customer-friendly and quicker than old-style retail banking, and can produce more profit for huge banks in Canada, which is a major goal.