OCBC Bank is to reduce teller jobs by half within two years as part of a $14 million spend on new ATMS and advanced 'digital kiosks' across its branch network.
The new machines took OCBC Bank’s Customer Experience and E-business teams two years to design by monitoring branch-based transactions from over 100 customers, including corporate banking customers who perform 60% of all over-the-counter transactions at across the counter.
The machines function like 'mini branches' and currently allow customers to perform 15 of the most frequent bank counter services such as cash deposits, cash withdrawals above daily ATM withdrawal limits, selecting the denomination of notes withdrawn, simultaneous cash and coin deposits, updating customers’ personal details and account and card related requests. The future-proofed kiosks incorporate facial and fingerprint scanners for biometric authentication and signature pads, which can be activated for customers’ use in the future.
The bank is beginning the roll out of the new technology at an initial 35 branches over the coming months, redeploying redundant human tellers as 'digital ambassadors' or to sales and advisory roles. The bank stresses that no tellers employed today will lose their jobs as a result and the existing network of bank branches will remain largely unchanged.
A pilot trial of the kiosks at eight branches in May has so far succeeded in pushing 10% of over-the-counter transactions to the new machines. Tellers converted to digital ambassadors have been roving the floor to help guide elderly customers in using the new machines.
Teng Wan Xian, a digital ambassador and former bank teller who has worked at OCBC Bank for seven years, says: “The new ATMs and digital service kiosks have reduced the waiting time for customers at the branch and allow us to provide better customer service as customers do not have to wait long to transact with tellers at the counter. I feel the new machines are like a “new generation” of tellers, processing everything very quickly. As a pioneer digital ambassador at OCBC, I help customers when they use the new machines and was trained to explain how to use other OCBC digital services like our OCBC Pay Anyone payments app, mobile banking app and Internet banking. With the new ATMs and service kiosks, I can now suggest an alternative channel to customers who come to the branch to transact. It is almost like providing customers with a one-stop digital solution to their daily banking needs.”