Jun 08, 2022
How ITMs are Changing the Service Landscape for Financial Institutions
As Financial Institutions, financial independent service operators (FISO), and ATM-as-a-Service providers can attest, ITMs were growing in popularity among banks and credit unions prior to the COVID-19 crisis. Back in 2016, when ITMs were in their relative infancy,
over 300 financial institutions in the U.S. had at least one ITM in place, according to the NCR Corporation.
The rate of adoption has risen since. There are a few reasons as to why. In addition to the wide variety of banking capabilities, ITMs have that ATMs don't, they make sense for financial institutions from an operational expense perspective. With a teller, for example, the average cost per transaction costs FIs approximately $4.50. With an ITM, on the other hand, it's less than $1 (just 70 cents).
Additionally, because ITMs have so many functionalities — bill payment, investment account transactions, CD renewals, CD inquiries, new account opening, money order issuance, etc. — ITMs are replacing full-service bank locations without having to sacrifice quantity, functioning as "branches in a box," as it were. In 2009, for example, there were nearly 95,600 full-service branches nationwide, according to the Wall Street Journal. The total was less than 83,300 in the U.S. by 2019.
Much as ITMs are enabling FIs to maintain the number of services that customers have come to expect, they're also preserving the quality of services. According to polling conducted by the NCR Corporation, among banks that offer video assistance as a service channel, over 95 percent of FIs report customers had as good of an experience with this channel as they've had with others.
Specialty network configurations for ITMs
With more financial institutions leveraging ITMs for convenience, cost savings, and customer satisfaction elements, FISOs must add new services to compete. These include a more sophisticated network solution with multiple endpoints. Ventus Managed Network-as-a-Service solutions for ITMs include the versatility to run many different software solutions. Each one is purpose-built to perform specific functions for secure connectivity (edge solutions). Ventus also designs backend solutions with the customer to meet their connectivity needs while prioritizing security, functionality, and scalability (backhaul solutions).
Some examples of Ventus edge solutions for ITMs include a custom solution for a major national bank that provides connectivity to ITMs, DVRs, and alarm panels. The customer needed to ensure the ITM traffic couldn’t see the DVR/alarm panel traffic and vice versa.
The Ventus solutions engineering team designed a solution to logically isolate the traffic on the Ventus router. The Ventus solutions engineering team created a different solution with all the same logical separation except the requirement was to have all other traffic isolated from multimedia streams.
Regarding backhaul solutions, Ventus solutions engineering team worked closely with our customer and multiple vendors to design a unique network architecture to support ITMs. Configuring the typical access to DNS servers, tellers, Active Teller and NetOp servers through the Ventus core. What made this project different was the customer needed their ITMs to also communicate with video enabled Cisco phones that most tellers had. Ventus configured access to Cisco CUCM and the subnet dedicated to Cisco video phones while NATing the phone’s IP addresses in different areas of the Ventus network.
Whether you are operating or supporting ATM and ITM networks, demand for financial services from ITMs is robust and is only likely to continue well into the future. Achieving success is dependent on a highly reliable network and enhanced connectivity.
Ventus Managed Network-as-a-Service for ITMs provides service secure network access that meets the needs of financial institutions and any other business with an ITM infrastructure. We provide enterprise cellular and fixed line connections for remote, branch and ITM deployments as well as access to the dual data centers with seamless multipoint route handling. From building the network, hosting platform solutions deploying play-and-plug hardware, Ventus can do it all.
Contact us today to learn more.
Contact us today to learn more.
Sources
https://ventusgns.com/blog/our-blog-1/post/from-iso-to-fiso-plotting-the-atm-service-provider-changing-landscape-59
https://www.ncr.com/blogs/banking/what-is-an-interactive-teller-machine
https://newsroom.ibm.com/2020-05-01-IBM-Study-COVID-19-Is-Significantly-Altering-U-S-Consumer-Behavior-and-Plans-Post-Crisis
https://www.ncr.com/blogs/banking/what-is-an-interactive-teller-machine
https://www.wsj.com/articles/people-arent-visiting-branches-banks-are-wondering-how-many-they-actually-need-11591531200
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160815005519/en/More-than-300-Financial-Institutions-Adopt-NCR%E2%80%99s-Interactive-Branch-Technology
https://www.atmmarketplace.com/companies/media/ventus/