Singapore’s OCBC Bank has revealed plans to reduce the number of bank teller positions by half over the next two years, as it drives forward with branch digitalisation.

Bank tellers will be retrained over the next five years to be able to perform digital or advisory roles, while $14 million will be invested in the deployment of new ATMs and digital service kiosks across the bank’s estate.

The machines took the bank two years to develop, by monitoring branch-based transactions from over 100 customers, including corporate banking customers, who perform 60 per cent of all over-the-counter transactions in-store.

Operating as ‘mini branches’, the new ATMs enable customers to perform 15 of the most frequent bank counter services, including cash and coin deposits, withdrawals above daily limits, selection the denomination of notes withdrawn, updating personal details and account and card-related requests.

OCBC piloted the launch of the ATMs at eight branches in May this year, with those branches migrating close to 10 per cent of over-the-counter transactions to the machines – which have completed over 35,000 transactions. The new technology will be deployed to a further 35 branches in the coming months.

The bank stressed that redundant bank tellers will become “digital ambassadors”, taking on higher value-added tasks that require decision-making or physical verification.

Dennis Tan, OCBC's head of consumer financial services in Singapore, said: “With the advent of technology, we have retrained staff for higher-value job functions that will transform our business and allow a more efficient workforce to deliver optimum results.”

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