Brand visionary Jean-Pierre Lacroix considers the evolution of the branch and looks to its future.

As financial services organizations position themselves for the future, they should focus on enhancing both human and digital channels. Karl Dahlgren, managing director of research at BAI, shares new BAI survey results that explain why.

Banks and credit unions must manage ATMs as mission-critical devices and consider an interactive teller machine (ITM) to soften the blow of branch closures.

Why the convenience of instant replacement is an important trick to have up your sleeve as the in-branch experience evolves.

Even though traffic has rebounded to surprising levels, long-term changes to layouts, staffing and offerings are coming.

Here are the steps to help mitigate the loss of customers who no longer work near branches they originally chose based on their office location.

Early adopters of branch transformation initiatives are seeing real benefits. How can you catch up?

Everyone is still trying to make sense of CX.

Amid today’s ultra-competitive banking landscape, you might think at first glance that digital and physical channels remain locked in an all-out battle, each using any advantage to lure customers to their side.

Not all that long ago—and perhaps it’s still the case in some corners—bank branches were targeted by cost cutters, who viewed physical space as hopelessly outdated in the digital world.

Even as digital banking gains ground, many customers still prefer human, face-to-face interaction for complex products such as mortgages and investments.

Banks have talked for years about bridging the yawning gap between physical and digital channels—first via multichannel, then omnichannel.

Back when people visited banks as their sole way to deposit paychecks, make large cash withdrawals and move money between accounts, branches were built to portray security and stability.

As customers continue to move towards digital channels, we see the ongoing, dramatic impact on monetary transactions, “paying and receiving” or teller transactions.

I recently attended two banking conferences and was struck by how much has changed—yet how much has not and needs to.

While consumers and small businesses consistently rate “local branch convenience” as a deciding factor in choosing their financial institutions, branch transactions are declining at an average rate of 7 percent per year—even higher in many urban areas.

Retail banking faces steep declines in branch visits.

As banks consolidate further, financial institutions have a chance to cherry pick good branch sites cast off by competitive mergers.

In an age when so much stress is placed on customer experience, financial institutions need to keep an eye on the safeguards that guarantee success.