Chapter 4: ISDN Puts Video To Work

Video Banking

A growing number of banks across the country are beginning to implement extensive programs of ISDN-linked video kiosks and walk-in centers as a way of extending their reach to new customers and new areas without expanding their workforce.

According to the industry newspaper American Banker, most of these efforts across the nation are built on a growing belief that younger and higher-income consumers are ready to use video banking. With ISDN now able to transport good quality images at cost-effective rates, video banking seems destined to grow as an avenue to this upscale market. The newspaper noted:

Chemical Bank has announced plans to close 50 of its 320 branches in the New York metropolitan area. Since some 40 percent of its business is conducted today by telephone and through ATMs, the bank expects the growing availability of these machines to offset the move.

Chase Manhattan Bank, also headquartered in New York, is currently testing three video kiosks. Using ISDN connections, the systems offer face-to-face contact with a live banking executive for a range of financial activities. Acceptance has been "extremely high," and the bank plans to expand the program to a growing number of its branches throughout the area.

Perhaps the most aggressive competitive program in the nation built on the power of ISDN is being implemented at Huntington National Bank in Columbus, Ohio. In the next three years, the bank plans to extend and expand telecommunications-based solutions to a range of banking needs, while physically closing as many as 40 percent of its traditional branches.

Huntington plans to install a battery of automated teller machines and specialized video phone service centers - most based on the growing speeds and availability of low-cost ISDN connections. Bank executives believe the centers will draw and retain a growing generation that actually prefers the fast, machine-oriented method of conducting bank business at any hour of the day, any day of the week.

The bank's chairman, Frank Wobst, expects to cut branch-banking costs by more than 25 percent while offering improved services such as 24-hour video availability of a live, human banker for a range of loan, investment and other transactions.

According to industry analysts, Huntington represents the vanguard of a movement that by the end of the decade will close some 40,000 of the nation's existing 100,000 traditional branch banks. Analysts also believe that remote banking, from single cash machines to unmanned walk-in video centers, are the wave of the future - and that the growing availability of ISDN video, voice and data connections will play a key role.

At the Mortgage Network in Boca Raton, Florida, an aggressive ISDN-based expansion program is underway to make the firm a major mortgage lender to Florida's real estate market. The firm is now using Intel PC-based ProShare video systems to extend its home mortgage capabilities to specific sites where homes are being sold - builders' offices, model homes and apartments, realty offices and other locations.

Using laptop computers linked through ISDN, prospective home buyers can talk directly to the company's loan officers, complete minimal paperwork, and have a loan approved - all in about ten minutes. According to managing director Dave Patten, the company plans to install PC laptop video systems at more than 1000 builder and real estate offices within two years.

"The flexibility that ISDN gives us is important," he said. "Setting up a video connection is as simple as installing a telephone line."

Other Sections Of This Chapter:

Beginning Of Chapter 4
Better, Less Costly Meetings
Video Equipment: An Overview
Putting Video To Work
Video Collaborations
Video Banking
Distance Learning
Video Security
A Video Revolution