Bank Closes Brick and Mortar Branches to Pay for Investments in Mobile

[Corey Dutton]

A smaller banking institution out of Wisconsin, Associated Bank, is closing some of its branch locations in order to fund the growing trend it sees in mobile banking. CFO, Christopher Del Moral-Niles says the bank has plans to close 1/3 of its branches, “If we close four branches,” Del Moral-Niles said, “assuming an annual spend of $2.5 million per branch — that’s now $10 million we can invest in mobile.”

Associated Bank began promoting its mobile banking app in 2012. The app allows banking customers to make deposits, handle payments between customers, text chat, etc. With more and more of the new generations of banking customers preferring to banking online, mobile seems to be a good investment for Associated Bank. But with this investment comes another investment, that is, in mobile security. With hackers always devising new tricks and techniques to defeat firewalls, banks that do go mobile in a big way will also face security challenges in a big way.

Posted by Corey Curwick Dutton, Hard Money Lender