When financial institutions decide to process ATMs and large commercial deposits in-house instead of outsourcing them to armored carriers, they know that they can enjoy significant savings and increase the bottom line. But choosing the right solution is critical because implementing the wrong one can result in increased costs from inefficiency.
Inefficient labor in the branch can erode profits. The challenge is to find a solution that not only eliminates the need to outsource ATM and commercial deposit processing but also reduces the labor required in the branch. That solution isn’t recyclers.
It’s multi-pocket currency sorters, and financial institutions that have installed them are saving significantly, some reducing ATM processing time by 89 percent.
Recyclers have their place in the branch and can provide benefits. They are helpful in the teller line to quickly and accurately process small cash deposits and withdrawals for customers. These are small transactions where speed and capacity are not critically important. Recyclers are also secure and provide an environment for cash to remain unattended.
But recyclers are not an effective solution for high-volume cash processing, such as commercial accounts, night deposits or ATMs. They are too slow, fill up quickly, and need to be properly bled, interrupting and further delaying the count.
Recyclers are not practical for commercial deposits because they lack an escrow. If a commercial customer declares a deposit amount different from what the recycler reports, it cannot be undone, and the teller will potentially have an unsatisfied customer on his or her hands.
Processing large-volume jobs requires a solution that was specifically designed with that purpose in mind. Countertop multi-pocket currency sorters are designed to count and sort large volumes of cash for quick, efficient ATM and commercial deposit processing. These multi-pocket machines are considerably faster than recyclers, a feature critically important to financial institutions wanting to save on labor in the branches.
Multi-pocket cash sorters process cash continuously without filling up or needing to be bled. Easy access to the output pockets lets operators remove sorted bills and keep the system running. Multiple pockets can be set to high-volume denominations, so even if a few pockets fill up, the machine keeps performing as the operator tends to processing.
Processing speed and access to the counted cash for quick removal create a solution that has proven results. One large bank reduced processing time for each ATM from 45 minutes to 5 minutes. One person now processes all the ATMs at a branch in less time than it took to process just one ATM previously. The bank achieved a return on investment on the multi-pocket sorters in a few short months.
The benefits of using this fast and easy solution extend beyond simply handling ATMs and commercial deposits. Multi-pocket sorters also let branch personnel repurpose cash in the branch by restocking teller cash recyclers and teller drawers efficiently with the right mix of denominations, among other benefits.
Any solution needs to be easy to learn and easy use, or efficiency will suffer, and abandonment will increase. Employee turnover in the banking industry reached a decade-long high in 2016, so it’s imperative that the user interface makes sense and new and existing personnel alike can operate it naturally. The right multi-pocket sorters are intuitive and guide the operator through the process, reducing the possibilities of errors.
In the age of branch transformation and cost reductions, financial institutions are implementing solutions that are fit and configured to their specific needs to improve the bottom line. Multi-pocket sorters can help save time.
