ABA Banking Journal - August 2010 - (Page 16)
ABA Community BAnking COMMUNITY BANK OF THE FUTURE: WHAT WILL IT LOOK LIKE? It’s not a branch, it’s a campus Beneficial Bank CEO Gerard Cuddy tries out the bank’s new “campus” office “Learning Library.” Beneficial stocks it with helpful books, information screens, and iPads loaded with more help. 16 | ABA BANKING JOURNAL | august 2010 photos by edward savaria G Philadelphia’s Beneficial Bank repositions offices as places to learn about finance By steve CoCheo, exeCutive editor erard Cuddy, president of $4.7 billion-assets Beneficial Mutual Savings Bank, admits to having been something of a “big bank snob” in the younger days of his career. Yet he made the shift to Beneficial in 2006 and is convinced smaller banks have a strong future. But not necessarily the same future they might have thought to get used to. “The internet is a flattener,” says Cuddy, also president and CEO of Beneficial Mutual Bancorp, the holding company. Cuddy says it accelerated the industry’s trend towards commoditization. For community banks to stand out, he believes they must evolve, in some ways, into something different. Hence the opening of two offices in Cherry Hill, N.J., that the bank calls “campuses,” not “branches.” Why “campuses”? Beneficial is trying an educational approach to banking.
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