A new WAMU piece just hit the newswire.
"WaMu Happy Faces Are Disappearing"
By Robin Sidel
"DALLAS- Before it collapsed last September, Washington Mutual Inc. spent roughly $1 billion on a branch-building binge that replaced bank-teller windows with free-standing counters and cash-dispensing machines.
New owner JP Morgan Chase & Co. is now dismantling it all, right down to the signs tha promise "free checking, free smiles," and basically dragging the former WaMu branches back to the past.
Traditional branches "are superior in every way," said Charles Scharf, who runs the Chase unit of JP Morgan."They might be boring, but they're practical."
The remodeling of about 900 former WaMu branches , which will take until October to complete, is a repudiation of the warm and fuzzy retail-banking strategy embraced by the Seattle thrift and other financial instiutions when times were good.
Some tellers are learning for the first time how to count cash. the circle of teller stations in the center of each branch is being replaced by a line of windows, including bulletproof glass. The renovations will free up room for more bankers to pitch credit cards, mortgages and other products to customers inherited from WaMu.
It will take about two weeks to overhaul each WaMu branch, with much of the work done at night so the branches can remain open. The WaMu name will disappear as each location's remodeling is finished.
JP Morgan, the largest US bank in stock-market value, is racing to absorb WaMu's branches, customers and employees amid the bankingn industry's worst crisis in a generation. JP Morgan bought most of WaMu for $1.9 billion when the thrift was seized by regulators in by far the largest failure ever by a federally insured financial institution. WaMu depositors were withdrawing their money, and the thrift was teetering under a mountain of bad mortgages.
Some analysts said it isn't a good time to mess with WaMu's branches. "The name of the game right now when it comes to banking is keeping customers," said Brad Stroghkamp, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc.
Mr. Scharf said JP Morgan is confident that the "sooner we get those branches to look and feel the way we want them to, the better off we are." The redesigns are proceeding despite a companywide push to cut costs.
JP Morgan executives coveted WaMu for years because of its branch network in California and Florida, two states where there are few Chase branches. But the New York company has criticized WaMu's touchy-feely branch design as confusing and inconvenient.
About 1,00 of WaMu's 2,200 former branches are laid out in the concept that the company patented n 2004 under the name "Occasio", which means "favorable opportunity" in Latin, according to WaMu's Web site. JP Morgan is closing about 100 Occasio branches.
With the purchase of WaMu, JP morgan's branch network expanded to more than 5,000.
WaMu began introducing Occasio branches in 2000 as part of its expansion into new markets like Chicago. The push coincided with a wave of new branches that were being built around the US as banks realized that customers still liked to go to brick-and-mortar facilities even as they did many transactions online.
The first thing many WaMu customers see when they walk in the door is a "concierge desk" where an employee directs them to tellers standing in the middle of the branch. Occasio tellers don't handle cash. Customers who want to wihdraw money take a slip of paper form a teller to a cash dispenser, entering a numerical code.
The unusual format still confuses some customers. On a recent visit to a branch in Santa Ana, Calif., one teller repeatedly stepped away from her station and waved vigorously in order to get the attention of a customer who was standing in line but couldn't see her.
"I got used to it, but at first it felt like "The Jetsons," said one customer who was withdrawing money recently at a WaMu branch in Dallas. The woman, who didn't want to be identified, was referring to the futuristic cartoon television series from the 1960s.
Worst of all, the strategy never vaulted WaMu beyond alalso-ran status in most of the markets it invaded. In the Chicago area, WaMu held just 0.6% of all deposits as of June 30, ranking 25th among all banks and savings institutions, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. As WaMu's mortgage problems deepened, the thrift closed some poorly performing branches, scaled back openings and ditched plans to enter additional markets.
Other banks have tried but failed to reinvent the traditional branch concept. In the late 1990s, First Union Corp., now part of Wells Fargo & Co., launched "Future Bank," emphasizing video kiosks and electronic banking over traditional teller transactions. It was a flop, hurting the Charlotte, NC bank's revenue and fueling a customer backlash that took years to mend.
Even Mr. Scharf, the JP Morgan executive, dabbled with one-on-one teller stations earlier this decade when he ran the retail business at Chicago-based Bank One Corp., which JP Morgan acquired in 2004. "We thought it would be more engaging for customers to be close to the teller," he said. "It just didn't work." "
I don't have the software to attach screenshots from the newswire from PowerEtrade Pro, so I just typed out the article. If there are mistakes, they are my typing mistakes, but I wanted to share it with you all as I couldn't find it on the internet yet.
AI
