Co-operative Bank has become the first lender to station agents inside branches in a bid to eventually woo customers from its banking halls and lure them to use alternative banking channels.
The move is likely to see the lender further cut costs by eventually reducing the staff required to run front office operations, and comes in the wake of the laying off of 160 middle level managers starting 2014 in a restructuring programme midwifed by McKinsey & Co.
Co-op Bank began rolling out the in-branch agent scheme last September at selected branches, and is targeting to have covered all branches by June this year.
The agents are paid the same commission for transactions done both inside and outside the bank branch.
Under the project dubbed ‘branch transformation and channels migration,’ the bank is stationing up to three agents in its banking halls to serve customers instead of the traditional tellers, tasking them with informing customers about agency banking and other out-of-branch products such as mobile money.
“We have migrated over 70 per cent of previous branch transactions to alternative channels, improving convenience for customers while reducing bank operation costs,” said Co-operative Bank.
“For branches that have already undergone the service transformation, in-branch agents have been withdrawn for the reason that customers using those branches have substantially migrated their transactions to agent outlets away from the branch.”
Co-op Bank said that at least 30 per cent of its 5.7 million account-holders are now using more than one bank product as a result of the drive, which it says is a transition measure ahead of full branch transformation later in the year.
The lender added that it has 2.5 million customers signed up to its M-Co-op Cash mobile banking app which allows customers to open accounts, apply for loans, make utility payments and withdraw cash using cell phones.
It rode on cost-cutting and growth of non-funded income to post a 37 per cent rise in net profit to Sh8.6 billion for the nine-month period ended September 2015.
