What is the Future of Bank Branches?

There are many Bank branches (Retail Banks) operating across India. Do we really need so many branches of the bank to tap customer base?

I personally feel going forward there will be following activities happening in the retail-banking arena

• Consolidation of Banks will lead to better Service, reduction of operation cost by closing down branches and merging with nearby ones.

• Innovative products / apps will be introduced like Google Pay (erstwhile Google Tez), Paytm to meet the customer demand.

• Artificial intelligence will play key role in customer handling, as we see few bank have deployed Chatbots to handle customer query and resolve them.

• Few Banks in India have even stopped accepting cash at the counter and they have replaced teller with CDM (Cash Deposit Machines) which operates 24/7.

• A unified Banking Gateway may be the future where customer of any bank can access his / her account in any specific bank. This will be future innovation in retail banking space, which needs more regulatory approvals, system integrations to provide safe and secure banking to customer.

• Still Branches are required in rural area to tap the customer who still does not have a banking account. A unified banking gateway would help to reach the last milestone and provide banking services across the nation.

• Currently there are unified payment gateway in INDIA like BHARATPAY where bill payment are uniformly accepted across banks / Fintech Companies. This kind of innovative solution will enable to reduce cost, Reconciliation of account are fast and secure.
 
• In Future even Bank may expose their API’s to third party companies for accepting deposit on behalf of the bank, if regulatory approvals are in place. Currently as per Central Bank guidelines in India, Payments banks cannot accept fixed or recurring deposits directly from the customer.

• In Near future, we can see very few banking players having branches nearby your location as technology has improved and customer are operating their bank account 24/7 from their mobile / online banking platform.

Each bank provides same service to customer in different way to attract customer by way of digital innovation products, Doorstep banking, Mobile Banking, Internet Banking according to their Bank’s customer base. Still Bank needs to reduce operation cost by providing more innovative products, reduce employee cost and increase productivity and profitability wherever possible.