U.S. Bank’s transactions are now 60% digital, Chief Operating Officer Andrew Cecere said at the Goldman Sachs U.S. Financial Services Conference this week.
But that doesn’t mean the Minneapolis-based bank is giving up on branches. It has around 3,000 branches and 80% of its sales activity still takes place there (Cue Brett King.) Branches are now about 2,500 square feet on average, Cecere said, down from 8,000 square feet at the time of the credit crisis.
And of course the bank is serious on the tech front. U.S. Bank is spending close to $1 billion a year on technology now, Cecere said, as opposed to $300 to $400 million during the credit crisis.
Cecere also discussed a geolocation initiative, wherein bank customers traveling to London (his example) would not need to call their bank. The bank would locate the customer via his phone and authorize transactions on that basis.
Hackathons are growing in importance at the bank for meeting customer needs, Cecere said:
Hackathons, sort of an odd word but this is where we get, actually, developers thinking about components that they can help us, again, think about how we can serve client needs. We’ve had a number of these — a number of ideas that popped out of these, an we have initiatives across different areas of the company focused on capabilities that we’ve learned from these hackathons over the last couple of years.
Cecere reiterated U.S. Banks’ commitment to the R3CEV consortium and described the bank’s primary foray into blockchain. “There are a number of initiatives we’re working on. Here the one I’m talking about relates to capital loan syndications. This is one where we think about the initiation and the ongoing payments at capital markets and loan syndication and you think about all the paperwork and information that needs to be shared among banks. This is an easy way to do that across multiple banks.”
Wait, “easy” and “multiple banks” in the same sentence? Now that’s innovation!