Taunton-based Bristol County Savings Bank passed the $1 billion in assets mark last year and opened its eighth Massachusetts branch in Dartmouth earlier this month.
A brand-new branch symbolizes growth – a happy situation for any bank. But for a growing number of financial institutions these days, it’s more than a symbol. The design of the building itself is a strategy to generate more business.
Executives at three banks that either have opened or soon will inaugurate newly constructed branches across the state told Banker & Tradesman last week that their buildings are all about bringing in customers.
“It is about creating a great experience for people when they come to visit us,” said Mt. Washington Bank Senior Vice President for Retail Banking Jim Morgan.
South Boston-based Mt. Washington, which until 2001 was a two-branch bank, will be opening its fifth office in Dorchester’s Codman Square in September. The $470 million mutual’s newest and largest branch, designed by Weymouth-based DRL Assoc. and slated to be built in a low-income neighborhood where no local bank has ventured before, will feature a large parking lot, well-lighted exterior, 4,400 square feet of space including a community room available for public use, and roundtable conference rooms designed to give the customer seeking a loan a friendlier experience.
“I think that is important, particularly in the city,” Morgan said. “There might be people less inclined to visit or do business with a bank. This comes down to common sense – are you more comfortable sitting with someone at a table, or across a desk?”
Meanwhile, Taunton-based Bristol County Savings Bank, which celebrated passing the $1 billion in assets mark last year, opened its eighth Massachusetts branch in Dartmouth, on bustling Route 6, earlier this month.
“When we looked at this branch, we were looking at it from the perspective of, what is the customer looking for Â… [we wanted] a place that customers felt comfortable coming into and [where they could grab] a cup of coffee,” said Vice President of Marketing Michele Roberts.
The open floor layout, marble lobby detailing and natural light streaming through floor-to-ceiling windows are other amenities designed to get people to come in and stay awhile, according to Roberts, who noted, “If people have a social aspect to their banking, they’re much less likely to switch banks.”
Bristol County Savings Bank President and Chief Executive Officer Dennis Kelly said the exterior of the building, also designed by DRL Assoc., features a loft with a custom-copper weathervane on top that reminds him of “the seaport area where they’d have the widows’ walks.” The newest branch is one community away from New Bedford’s seaport district.
Kelly noted that the amount of money a bank puts down on a brand-new building – Bristol County Savings’ structure cost somewhere between $1 million and $2 million – isn’t the only factor in cost.
“It’s really about the return that bank office could bring in,” he said, explaining that a slightly more expensive facility could help attract more customers.
Bristol County Savings’ in-house travel agency partnership, which allows its Prime Time checking customers to streamline travel packages through a local agency and travel together, if they wish, is another example of the way the bank took the “social banking” philosophy to the practical level 16 years ago, Roberts said. It’s one of the services advertised in the lobby of the new branch.
Roberts added that the bank wanted to try out brand-new amenities such as a self-serve coffee bar and Internet banking center in the Route 6 branch, and if they work, to introduce them in other branches.
‘Unique Approach’
Fitchburg-based Fidelity Bank took the opposite path, trying out a new feature based on a branding philosophy in a portion of its Shirley branch, which was built in 2004. It worked so well that elements of the design are all over its new 48,000-square-foot corporate center and branch on the Leominster Connector.
The bank even has a name for its strategy.
“Two-and-a-half years ago, we began to create a unique approach to financial services, called LifeDesign,” explained Edward F. Manzi Jr., president and chief executive officer of Fidelity, which has $380 million in assets.
LifeDesign has the goal of helping clients make informed financial decisions for whatever plan they have, in whatever stage of life, Manzi said. In the Shirley branch, it came to fruition through a financial resource center with comfortable chairs, tables and bookshelves with financial materials customers could peruse. The bank also runs seminars on financial and other topics out of the resource center.
The same elements are now sprinkled throughout the 3-story glass, steel and brick tower that “melds the old with the new,” said Manzi, who refers to Fidelity as a “119-year-old start-up” that likes to incorporate the best of each in its business. He and his staff just moved into their new headquarters last week, although Manzi is maintaining an office at the former headquarters on Main Street in Fitchburg, which is still the bank’s main office.
The sixth and newest Fidelity branch totals 4,500 square feet and is located on the ground floor of the new structure, as is Manzi’s office. The remaining space is divided between bank corporate offices and a tenant who’s leased 18,000 square feet through 2017.
The branch is also unique as the very first “Advanced Building” to be completed in Massachusetts, according to Project Manager Alvin Collins of Habitat Advisory Group in Groton. The “Advanced Building” concept, developed by the New Buildings Institute in Oregon, has created standards for building efficiency and sustainability. The new Fidelity Bank center garnered attention for such innovations at the Boston Society of Architects’ Build Boston conference last November, and was featured in an article Collins authored in that month’s Structures supplement in Banker & Tradesman.
“We were able to shave 30 percent off energy costs,” he said.
The building cost $7 million, including just $100,000 in energy-saving upgrades that is expected to come back to Fidelity within two years when a $65,000 subsidy, kicked in by utility companies sponsoring the project, is factored into the equation.
All three new branches are or will be within a stone’s throw of malls and other major retail centers – something executives acknowledged as a key factor in planning.
“We looked at whether there was a vibrant small-business community [before deciding to move in to Codman Square],” Mt. Washington’s Morgan said.
He also mused upon the irony that just 10 years ago, banks were focused on how to keep people out.
“The terminology was ‘alternative delivery.’ That meant: Bank from home and the Internet. One of the primary goals was to get people to stop using branches,” he said. “It does seem counterintuitive, though there is an argument to be made that you can do it more cheaply – a 4,000-square-foot branch is a lot more costly than an ATM.”
While online customers are definitely out there, Morgan said – and Mt. Washington is striving to cater to them, too – “I think banks lost sight of the fact that they are basically retailers” who need to serve all types of consumers to survive.
