Universal banker: The new staffing approach: as branch transactions decline, banks are shifting from dedicated tellers toward more multifaceted job roles.

• Author: Stewart, Deb

FOR YEARS RUNNING, THE AVERAGE TRANSACTIONS per teller and average sales per non-teller have been plunging. This has led to the situation today in which many financial institutions are rethinking the way the branch does business.

One of the most widely considered innovations is a switch from assigning each employee only one job role (teller, platform worker, new-accounts taker or lender) to one in which each worker is allotted a "universal banker" function involving multiple tasks.

Key benefits of this approach are staffing flexibility and improved productivity and efficiency. According to a recent study from Novantas Inc., the New York-based financial industry research and consulting company, 20 percent of small branches (having less than 4,000 teller transactions per month) have already combined the teller and platform positions into a single universal role. These banks have seen as much as a 50 percent productivity improvement in handling teller transactions.

So, how are banks implementing the shift to the universal banker model?

Are there any emerging best practices? Here is an overview: What does a universal banker do? Extraco Bank N.A. (assets $1.2 billion), Temple, Texas, made the switch to a universal-banker staffing model eight years ago. During that time, the bank has seen declines in teller transactions of 10 percent to 12 percent each year. Twenty percent of deposits are now made through image-enabled ATMs, only three years after the bank introduced them. Mobile deposits are continuing to drive transaction numbers down. Extraco's deposits and loans are up, but customers are mostly using alternate delivery channels for these services. "Using universal bankers in our branches has allowed us to address this change quite well," says James Geeslin, vice chairman and chief consumer banking officer. He is also CEO of Extraco Consulting.

Universal bankers are working all over the lobby, greeting every customer within five seconds after they walk through the door. "The associate that greets the customer owns the customer," says Geeslin. If the customer needs to do a teller transaction, the associate will take him or her to a teller pod to complete that task. If the customer has a simple service need, that associate will address it at a teller pod. If the customer is in the branch to open a new account or some other task that requires a greater degree of privacy, then that same associate will take him or her into an office environment.

Associates are able to take unsecured loan applications (which are scored instantly and then closed); they can open a business checking account; and, they can start an insurance application. More than 95 percent of business requests are completed by the person who meets the customer when he or she walks into the branch. Only investment and mortgage requests or business loans are handed off by the first associate to a second employee.

Extraco bankers wear communications headsets in order to orchestrate movement within the branch. If one banker needs to leave the floor with a customer for a complex request, he or she will call in another banker to fill in. Pneumatic tubes from the drive-through go into the lobby, allowing bankers to move easily from dealing with customers in the lobby to dealing with customers at the drive-through via a two-way video screen. The only assigned role in the branch supports a dedicated commercial window on the teller-line. Managers do what other universals do, working with customers the majority of their time. Managers' other responsibilities are training, coaching and counseling staff.

Umpqua Bank (assets $21.9 billion), Roseburg, Ore., has been using a modified universal banker model since 1995. "We are always asking ourselves, how do we take the...