Few things irk bank customers as much as getting stuck in a teller line behind someone depositing or withdrawing a lot of cash.
Typically, the teller has to find the manager, who transports the cash to or from the vault. The process can be time consuming.
That is one reason $600 million-asset Great Florida Bank in Miami has invested about $400,000 in so-called cash recyclers - mini-vaults placed right at teller stations that can hold hundreds of thousands of dollars in bills and coins.
When customers need large sums, the teller can provide them fast by punching an employee code into the unit.
Great Florida has been using these machines since it opened for business in June 2004; it now has 10 in its seven branches.
Henry Campos, its head of retail operations, said it chose cash recyclers instead of full-size vaults to save space and speed up transactions. (In addition to the cash recyclers, each Great Florida branch has a small vault, mostly for coins.)
De La Rue PLC of Basingstoke, England, introduced recyclers in Europe about eight years ago and brought them to the United States in early 2003.
John W. Smith, a senior vice president, said De La Rue created the product to help tellers provide more efficient service. He pointed out that in a recent report, "The Frontline Factor: An exploration of relationship-based strategies," the BAI in Chicago said 56% of banks think teller transactions are too time-consuming.
"The market is demanding that front-line people do all sorts of transactions for customers in a short amount of time, and now we have given them a tool that allows them to do that," Mr. Smith said.
TCF Financial Corp. in Wayzata, Minn., started using the teller cash recycler in 2003, said Mark Dillon, a senior vice president with the $12.8 billion-asset company. TCF first installed the machines in some in-store branches and now has them in 22 of its 435 branches, including some stand-alone ones.
"We are talking about high-volume transactions and limited space," Mr. Dillon said. "If you can keep people from moving around and going to the vault" and can reduce customers' time in the teller line, "it's a win for everyone."
Mr. Smith said that roughly 150 banks and credit unions use De La Rue's recyclers. Like most of these banks and credit unions, TCF first installed De La Rue's teller cash dispensers, which are like the recyclers but do not take deposits.
Some of the smaller banks, such as Great Florida, have the recyclers in all of its branches. Others banks, such as Wachovia, use them in a handful of new and high-volume branches.
De La Rue says most of the banks and credit unions that use the teller cash recyclers have saved at least one full-time employee per branch that way.
Why aren't more banks using them? Mr. Smith said the reason is not reluctance but ignorance - that many do not know such a machine exists.
"They have not caught on because people don't know about them, but we are hoping to change that," he said. The company is meeting with institutions and going to trade shows to spread the word.
TCF's Mr. Dillon said there is another reason: Not all bank branches are busy enough to justify the investment.
"Putting them in a slow branch does not make sense," he said. "There is simply no need for it."
