At a new branch that St. Paul-based AgriBank recently opened in Mankato, farmers can apply for an operating loan, negotiate equipment leases, buy crop insurance or take advantage of the farm credit bank's management consulting services.
They can do all these things and more - check weather and commodity-price updates, make an appointment for help with tax preparation or check on AgriBank's latest product offerings - whether it's noon or 10 p.m.
Here's the unusual part: Thanks to a variety of electronic communications gear, the Mankato branch is staffed by one person just 20 hours a week and takes up only 36 square feet of space in a shopping mall.
That's smaller than one of the tents in which my family and I used to huddle to wait out the rainstorms that inevitably engulfed our camping trips.
All of which means the cost of installing and equipping the location - about $50,000 - was just a fraction of the $1 million or more it would cost to build and staff a conventional, full-service branch. Yet, it gives customers access to key transactions even during non-business hours.
Welcome to Gene Pranger's version of the bank branch of the future. Pranger, 36, is an erstwhile advertising executive who founded Alexander Mackenzie & Pranger, a Minneapolis marketing firm that designs, builds and equips modular satellite locations for the banking industry.
We're not talking just automated teller machines (ATMs) and handy night depositories, mind you. No, the 10 minimally staffed satellites that Pranger has installed since he started the company in 1995 also include some or all of a wide range of communications technology.
There are interactive telephone systems that provide account data and other bank-by-phone services, for example, and interactive video systems that offer product data as well as access to remote, extended-hours customer service centers where a representative appears on-screen to assist with transactions.
Internet access
There's also internet access to an institution's Web page for detailed information on product offerings and rates, not to mention on-site remote tellers who provide the walk-by version of a drive-through teller service and thereby boost productivity beyond the ability of a teller working face-to-face. (The reason, Pranger said: A remote teller can be attending to a second customer while the first one is tied up making endorsements or completing other documents.)
Taken together, these technologies offer "a very economical way" in which an institution can expand its presence, Pranger said.
Pranger does not pretend that his is the definitive strategy for low-cost banking satellites. After all, National City Bank recently announced an intriguing plan to install a series of small, electronics-equipped kiosks in a number of corporate locations occupied by their customers.
Pranger's banking clients, however, are focusing on shopping malls, airports, groceries and other high-traffic retail locations for their satellites, although he said his modular designs also lend themselves to the corporate settings targeted by National City Bank. In fact, he said a California client is discussing the possibility of testing several corporate sites early next year.
Most of the satellites that Pranger has installed from Memphis and New Orleans to St. Louis and Los Angeles are larger than the Mankato location, ranging in size from 400 to 700 square feet and costing $150,000 to $250,000, depending on the electronic equipment involved.
Whatever the size and configuration, however, the result is a comparatively low-cost way to serve customers "at their convenience rather than ours," as AgriBank Vice President Steve Baker put it.
`On their own time'
"We need to go where the customers are - the malls, the supermarkets, the agribusinesses - and serve them on their own time," said Baker, who's in charge of the farm credit bank's marketing, research and development areas. "Given the cost of bricks and mortar, this looks like the best way to do it."
Pranger and Baker are not suggesting that these satellites will replace bank branches altogether: "We'll still need branches for lengthier and more detailed personal interaction, and for customers who prefer the privacy and atmosphere of a conventional branch," Baker said.
Not that Pranger's designs eliminate personal interaction completely - in fact, all of his installations have included service-desk modules where anywhere from one to four part-time or full-time bankers are assigned.
While Pranger did not invent the concept of a satellite banking facility, his modular designs lend themselves ideally to the task of figuring out the best way to approach the concept, said Tina Swanson, a senior vice president at First American National Bank in Nashville, Tenn.
"Everyone's trying to come up with the branch bank of the future," said Swanson, whose company had Pranger install a 400-square-foot prototype at the Memphis airport in March. "But technology and customer needs are changing so rapidly, you need the kind of flexibility that [Pranger's modular designs] offer."
Kept busy
Swanson could not offer objective data on the success of the Memphis satellite, although she said the site has been kept busy not only by travelers, but by airport-based businesses as well.
But the company is satisfied enough with the Memphis site to begin rolling out the concept at other locations, Swanson said, including "at least three more in the next six months." The Memphis unit is staffed by two people and includes an ATM, interactive telephone system, a touch-screen information video system and a secure night depository.
In St. Paul, Baker said AgriBank also is pleased with its Mankato satellite, although that location has been open only a few weeks and no expansion decisions have been made. But Baker is "very optimistic" that Pranger will be given the opportunity to build additional units.
The feedback from his clients has been encouraging enough, in fact, to convince Pranger that his revenues will more than triple in 1998, to about $4.5 million from a projected $1.4 million this year.
The estimate is "a conservative one," he said, based on written or verbal agreements to build 24 units and negotiations under way to build another 30. By yearend 1997, the company will have installed eight satellites.
