If you’ve got a branch in a relatively low-income urban area, two freeways within a half mile, and your transaction zone is 25 feet from the entrance, you may be facing a very real robbery risk. The odds this branch gets robbed is way higher than others, but even then, statistics say an injury will only occur in 1 out of 100 times the branch is robbed.

It’s a branding question for sure. Do you place the safety of your employees over the atmosphere and environment you’d rather provide to your members/customers?

Have you ever been in one a branch with bullet proof glass? It’s viscerally uncomfortable. Everyone is yelling at each other through the glass. I’m certainly not screaming my Social Security Number.

I’ve seen branches with bullet proof glass where the tellers had little bits of scrap paper for members to write down their sensitive information. That’s not “relationship building.”

I would be remiss if I did not also add that we still pay tellers “squat” AND now require them to “cross-sell” our 48 products and services in addition to balancing to the penny, stand on their feet all day, be personable…..and be in the line of fire.

Nice to see these stats are actually going down. Seems like every day on my google alerts I read about another credit union robbery.