StellarOne Bank Envisions Branch of the Future

The Virginia-based bank is looking to modernize its branches and maximize its tablet offerings.

At StellarOne Bank, the future is now.

The Charlottesville, Va.-based bank with about $3 billion in assets recently embarked on a plan to modernize its branches by pursuing efficiency, convenience and sleekness.

Joe Jordan, director of e-channels and payments products at StellarOne, says that about a year ago, the bank formed a "branch of the future committee" to discuss ways it can be better equipped to cater to the changing dynamics of the bank-customer relationship.

"You would walk into one of our existing branches at that time, and it's 3-5,000-square feet, there's 6-8 teller lines, offices and a huge lobby," he says. "It is very impressive, but there's an ongoing reduction in branch transactions, so it was clear we needed to do something different."

To accomplish this, the bank heard proposals from five consulting groups as potential partners in designing these new branches, before eventually settling on Consultants & Builders Inc. of Atlanta, a financial services-specific design firm.

The bank then opened its initial "branch of the future" in a 660-square foot building, and later gutted and redesigned two existing branches that were about 1,700 square feet into what Jordan describes as a "revolutionary" design.

Instead of traditional teller lines, the branches feature "pods," which Jordan describes as bean-shaped desks. They are manned by employees who can do more than traditional tellers, whom Jordan likens to specialists.

"They can do anything you can do in a branch manager's office," he notes, in addition to performing normal teller functions.

The branches also feature digital signage, and a wall that has a tube system similar to what customers see in the drive-through part of bank branches currently. Customers can conduct basic transactions through the tubes, which are fed to a back office and retrieved and processed by employees situated there. Jordan says workers at these new branches rotate between back office, manning the pods and other functions during a normal work day, so as not to get "burnt out" on any one task.

Jordan says StellarOne is also putting a bigger focus on using tablets to help drive efficiencies in its operations. The bank is running a pilot program with some of its treasury management sales officers using tablets to eliminate paper trails and streamline key treasury services.

"In the past [the sales officers] would have to take paper documents to clients to fill out, they'd have to be processed, and there were a number of steps, which we've tried to cut out," he explains. "Now, when they go to talk to a customer about wires or ACH or whatever it may be, they can fire up an app on the tablet and fill out a digital pdf form, and the customer can e-sign it."

That information then goes back to the bank's back office support team for processing. To ensure security, the bank encrypts these devices and also utilizes Good mobile device management and security services to keep that data secure. "Anything stored on there is in the Good cloud and it can be wiped or locked," in the event the device is compromised, he says.

Jordan says it "was an intense process" to get this up and running, but the initiative will be greatly beneficial in driving efficiency, and also gives the bank a "wow factor" to its customers.

And tablet innovation isn't just for corporate services at StellarOne. Jordan sees the tablet as eventually becoming the dominant channel and more popular than online in the next few years, and so the bank has strived to create an optimal tablet experience for its customers.

The bank's native tablet app, for both iPad and Kindle Fire, allows customers to view statements and check images, pay bills, make transfers, and will soon feature the ability for customers to engage in live chat through the tablet, says Jordan.

"We wanted our customers to be able to do anything they can do through their desktop on the tablet app," he says.

Jordan says it is important for StellarOne to have services such as these as banking becomes more mobile and consumers more tech-savvy.

"We're a $3 billion bank, but I think we have some pretty complex systems," he says.

Bryan Yurcan is associate editor for Bank Systems and Technology. He has worked in various editorial capacities for newspapers and magazines for the past 8 years. After beginning his career as a municipal and courts reporter for daily newspapers in upstate New York, Bryan has ... View Full Bio