We first worked with the development executive of the Abbey National in the 1990’s before the group was purchased by Santander. At that time our workstreams covered branding and interior design for six retail branch formats, including various customer segments and financial transaction types. Each branch format fulfilled a different function for the bank: from a small volume convenience offering, high street large volume servicing to a traditional City financial retailer.
Finding the right size branch to boost sales performance of a retail bank - Abbey National.
Safeway Stores briefed our creative team to design their Megastore supermarkets in Milton Keynes which included an in-store bank, “Abbey National at Safeway”. Our retail branch design workstream encompassed brand, sub-brand, tactical, format segmentation, environment and customer journey (see visuals). Each visual illustrates the creative intent of design proposals prior to construction. We thank First Partnership for their contribution to the Safeway Megastore installation.
The strategy for in-store bank retailing is a very simple one.
It revolves around convenience and in the implicit understanding that access no longer means convenience but rather time-earning. This leads the more astute to conclude that time-earning is about search, possession and transaction time. The store design of a convenience bank channel needs to deliver on its raison d‘etre.