Bank tellers — and bank robbers for that matter — could soon circulate as often as $2 bills.

Capital One’s latest trend is opening offices that aren’t bank branches like the ones that Bonnie and Clyde visited. Instead, they are “cafes” where customers can buy gourmet coffee and access free Wi-Fi. As far as sitting down with a flesh and blood banker to apply for a loan or open a new account, you can forget doing that. Instead employees at the newest Boston branch will answer questions about Capitol One’s services. If you need a teller or a loan officer, they will direct you to their website. There are no tellers although they do offer “new” ATMs that dispense exact change instead of simply $20 bills.

The future — if the latest trend holds — is to convert bank branches into sales centers where branding is more important that accommodating customers that want to make physical transactions.

Traditional banks toying with new formats follows a huge rush of investment money flowing into start up online banking enterprises. Forgive me for sounding cynical, but just like with every other Internet “sales” endeavor the odds are online bankers will cherry pick the gold-plated credit risks as well as put in place boilerplate formats that takes a one size fits all approach to lending. It is already being done with online mortgages where the best rate isn’t often secured due to limited loan options and even more limited customer and lender interaction.

It almost makes you miss the days when banks were open 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Monday through Thursday with extended hours to 6 p.m. on Fridays. That was back in the day when banks— and investors — were content with long-term returns in the mid-single digits.

I guess I’m a dinosaur of sorts. While I’m planning to get the service that allows me to turn my debit card “on and off” through Bank of Stockton, I have no desire to bank online. I have a relatively low faith in the security of such transactions especially after a Capital One service representative explained to me why they charged for on-line payments as opposed to not charging for electronic transactions done by telephone. It had everything to do with the exposure the bank has for theft or hacking of key information. It makes sense. Hacking into Internet transactions is pretty easy and universal compared to phone lines.

I use bank ATMs almost exclusively although occasionally I will use a teller for a crucial or complicated transaction or when I need to clarify my account status. I don’t want to talk to a customer representative in India when it involves my money nor do I want to be charged for the “privilege” of using a teller. All of a sudden being told I had to pay $5 every time I used a teller is why I switched 23 years ago from Wells Fargo to Bank of Stockton.

There is, of course, a big difference between community banks and massive national concerns whether they are traditional brick and mortar banks or the new online creations.

Personal relationships do mean something. A loan officer in many community banks you deal with face-to-face is still often allowed to interject character assessment into whether an individual is worthy of a loan along with the standard credit scores and income verification.

That doesn’t sound like a big deal but I can rattle off a long list of farmers, small businesses, families, and individuals that benefitted from such a relationship and were able to secure loans from community banks that they were denied by larger banks. And, in virtually every instance, they paid back loans and prospered as did the banks that made the loans.

The days of a bank on every corner are long gone.

So are the days of only having 39 hours a week to do your banking.

While the trend makes it “easier” to do financial transactions, one has to wonder if that is a good thing in all cases.

How many people have benefitted from face-to-face sit down conversations about their financial situation that goes way beyond simply money needs for that moment?

There is a lot to be said for investing some time into the “ask” and sweating a little bit beforehand. Interacting with a computer program doesn’t make you think long range but instead emphasizes instant gratification.

As for bank robbers, the smart ones are embracing the change. Each year without pointing a gun or risking extremely long prison sentences, online thieves steal $1 billion a year from banks compared to the Bonnie & Clyde types that stole a partly $38 million (figures based on 2011 FBI statistics) annually while risking spending most of the rest of their lives behind bars.

Who knows, maybe one day a cutting edge bank robber will drop by a bank “branch” and use the free WiFi service to hack into the bank’s servers and steal millions while the teller replacements offer them a cup of gourmet coffee.



This column is the opinion of executive editor, Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinion of The Bulletin or Morris Newspaper Corp. of CA.  He can be contacted at dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com or 209.249.3519.