Meet Otis. He’s an ATM on steroids.
Otis – Orrstown Bank employees’ nickname for their new “on-the-spot” Diebold in-lobby teller terminal – can deposit customers’ stacks of mixed bills and checks 24/7. Eventually, it will offer other services, including the ability to video chat with a banker.
This ATM is one of several features available to customers at Orrstown Bank’s new regional office in Swatara Township.
The facility, which opened to retail customers earlier this month, offers services available at Orrstown’s other retail branches, in addition to housing a growing number of the bank’s employees and departments.
The building will also allow the Shipppensburg-based bank to better service its growing base in Dauphin, York and Lancaster counties, said CFO David Boyle.
“It made a lot of sense for us,” he said of the new building.
Growing footprint
Orrstown is one of several area financial institutions using recent market disruptions to its advantage.
After a series of acquisitions knocked banks like Metro and Susquehanna out of the market, several institutions have looked to increase their footprints in the affected areas.
For Orrstown, which has 24 banking locations across the midstate and one in Maryland, that meant looking for a hub near these opportunities that could complement its Shippensburg headquarters.
The building at 4750 Lindle Road fit the bill. The sprawling facility sits on a more than eight-acre parcel of land that, until recently, housed the Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania.
Orrstown, which paid about $4.3 million for the building in February, will ultimately occupy about 60 percent of the 85,000-square-foot facility, Boyle said. Two additional businesses occupy other parts of the building.
The office offers convenience to Orrstown employees who live in the areas to which the bank is trying to expand, said Mark Bayer, senior vice president for strategic corporate initiatives.
One employee, for example, has been commuting from the east end of Lancaster to the Shippensburg headquarters for nine years, he said. The new location will ease that drive, as well as that of other talent the bank hopes to attract and retain.
Employees started working out of the new building in July. About 30 people report to work there now, but that number will grow in the coming weeks as more offices move into the building.
The facility is just one of several steps the bank, which has roughly $1.3 billion in assets, is taking to grow its reach, Boyle said. Orrstown is looking to acquire more properties in Lancaster and Dauphin counties in the coming years, and could even eventually expand its Berks County offerings.
High-tech, high-touch
Orrstown is looking to expand more than its number of branches. The new facility also offers a glimpse into what Bayer describes as an experiment in “high-tech, high-touch” banking.
Otis is part of that experiment. If customers like that technology, which can perform some functions now but should be fully up and running in the coming months, Orrstown will consider installing it in other branches.
The Lindle Road facility also offers technology for employees, including video-enabled training and conference rooms where they can connect with coworkers in other offices.
All these gadgets and gizmos, however, don’t mean Orrstown is abandoning the old ways of doing business, Bayer said. Customers still have access to all the in-person interactions on which the bank was built.
“We’re really trying to leverage technology as much as we can without losing the personal connectivity that a community bank has,” he said.
