To arms! A handful of banks have evolved into specialists for the military customer. How they market themselves and provide service to this niche segment offers lessons for other financial institutions.

• Author: Sablosky, Tanja Lian
• Position: Banking industry's services and marketing

Here's your mission: Create banking services for a desirable segment of customers who maintain a household in the United States and work for an extremely stable and dependable employer, but who have unusual travel habits and lifestyles. These special customers, for example, have been known to do the following:

* Relocate in a different section of the world at least every 18 to 36 months.

* Expect car loans to be approved while they are living in South Korea.

* Assume that they can open a new checking account while residing in Italy.

* Expect the bank to be understanding when their mortgage payment is late--often because they had to leave the country with only 48 hours advance notice.

Who are these unusual customers? They are U.S. military personnel.

Several banks across the country have specialized in catering to the unique needs of armed forces employees. Examining how these banks operate can spark ideas about how other financial institutions can better serve their military customers. It may also suggest ways that banks can improve or enhance service to their routine, nonmilitary customers. Here's an overview of three niche banks for military customers.

Eisenhower Bank: A 'Community' Institution with Customers All over the Globe

Two years after the Broadway National Bank, San Antonio, Texas, was founded in 1941 by Colonel Charles E. Cheever, the institution opened a branch at the nearby Randolph Field Air Force base to help military personnel. Ever since, the bank has maintained a specialized "military branch."

"We're different from a community bank because our customers are all around the world," says Ron Hannan, vice president of marketing for Eisenhower Bank, the military bank branch's name since 1973, when it was chartered as a separate entity exclusively for military personnel. (Broadway Bank still exists and, with $1.3 billion in assets, is the largest independently owned bank headquartered in the San Antonio area.) "Our customers can't come into the bank--they're in the Middle East, Korea, Afghanistan and Iraq," says Hannan, but the bank works very hard to create a sense of community anyway.

To meet the needs of those international customers, Eisenhower Bank provides telephone banking services that are available 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week. "Our call centers understand that our customers are calling from different time zones. We have clocks showing what time it is all over the world mounted in the call centers," says Hannan. "Our call center personnel are very sensitive to the unique needs of our customers."

Many of the bank's employees understand military life firsthand they are retired military or family members of enlisted personnel. Hannan himself is a retired colonel who spent 26 years in the Air Force.

"For Eisenhower Bank, 'community' is a key word," says Hannan. The bank's headquarters is located in San Antonio, Texas, near Fort...