It's not the bank you used to know

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Thursday, July 1, 2004

It's not the bank you used to know

By BILL VIRGIN
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST

Bank lobbies used to be built as fortresses of marble and brass. For Americans who knew bank runs and failures firsthand, those lobbies were designed to send a message of reassurance: We're solid and sober in protecting your money.

That's less important of a message for Americans brought up in an era of bank bailouts, deposit insurance and "too big to fail," for whom money is more likely to appear as a piece of plastic or some numbers on a computer screen than as physical bills and coins.

Instead of building temples of commerce, banks are now engaged in a competition of one-downmanship, to see who can make its branches look as un-banklike as possible.

And two of the most ambitious in this competition to transform the bank branch into something resembling a coffee shop -- or your living room -- have headquarters here in the Northwest.

Washington Mutual Inc. last week announced it had received a patent for its design of a bank branch it has dubbed Occasio and has been rolling out around the country. The Seattle-based company says it has applications pending for more patents on its concept of the modern bank branch.

Meanwhile, the current issue of BusinessWeek features the magazine's annual design awards. One of those awards went to Roseburg, Ore.-based Umpqua Bank for a new branch design that makes them "look more like community centers than austere financial institutions."

What's fascinating is the commonality between the two concepts. Both hold up Starbucks as an inspiration for their branch designs. Both use the word "welcoming" in news releases to describe the design. Both use the concept, and the term, "concierge desk."

Hmmm. Coincidence? Or is someone copying someone else?

In truth, everyone in banking is copying everyone else. Banking is no less susceptible to industrywide fads than any other business; thus the 1960s saw a wave of new branches with open floor plans and incredibly high ceilings, so that you could share the details of your car loan not just with the office-deprived lending officer but with everyone else in the joint.

Umpqua spokeswoman Lani Hayward said the bank went to a "store" approach with its branches in 1995, as part of a broader effort to move the company beyond a seven-branch bank in a slow-growth market. Today Umpqua has 64 branches, with ambitions of following the Interstate 5 corridor from Seattle to northern California.

"All banks have the same products and services," Hayward says. "You can't really differentiate yourself that way."

Nor, she adds, is the design of a bank branch necessarily a major differentiation either. Yes, Umpqua has the big-screen TV and comfy chairs and its own brand of coffee. But as she says, "Anyone can make a pretty store. It's how you operate within it." Umpqua contends its differentiation will be not just in the design of the branches but also in the training of its people.

As for Washington Mutual's patents, "That doesn't affect us," she says. "It's very specific," to the point of having a list of elements that make up its design and layout for branches.

That plan includes some of the standards of new bank design such as a kids' play area and online access, as well as some more radical features including teller towers (resembling stand-up bar tables) and tellers equipped with hand-held devices to process routine transactions (Umpqua says it still has teller windows).

How many of those elements would have to show up in another bank's design to infringe upon Wamu's patent, and how vigorously Wamu might pursue an infringement case would depend on the circumstances, a bank spokeswoman says.

(As an aside, the retailer everyone loves to imitate, Starbucks, says it, too, has sought protection for certain design elements in its stores, such as murals, packaging, posters, fixtures such as lamps and product shapes, under intellectual property laws.)

Consumers will get their own chance to compare and contrast soon; Umpqua has expanded into this region with a commercial-loan office in Bellevue, and is looking for a location for a full-service branch.

But they're hardly the only ones trying to dress down their branches. In the competition to swap pinstripes for cardigans, today's designs of quaint bank branches may tomorrow be considered positively industrial.

No one, in the quest for an image of "aw shucks, we're jest plain folk here" has yet rolled out a bank-branch design featuring unfinished wood floors, a cracker barrel and a potbellied stove. Yet.

P-I reporter Bill Virgin can be reached at 206-448-8319 or billvirgin@seattlepi.com. His column appears Tuesdays and Thursdays.

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