Level Four provides
development, deployment and testing products for all types of ATM
network, enabling banks and processors to maximise their
investments in ATM technology. Level Four CEO Ian Kerr discusses
with Douglas Blakey how banks can increase the functionality and
security of their self-service channel.
Go deeper with GlobalData
“With bankers still struggling to
restore their reputation, there is really nothing worse for them
than for a customer to receive an out of service message when they
try to use one of their ATMs,” Level Four CEO Ian Kerr told
RBI.
“For many people, it is the most
common customer touchpoint and banks simply must retain the quality
and reliability of the self-service channel,” added Kerr.
With the number of banknotes in the
eurozone growing by about 9% per year, cash is not going to
disappear any time soon, notwithstanding the growing popularity of
digital and card-based transactions.
Against this backdrop, banks around
the world have increased their investment in the self-service
channel and are investing in technologies to increase the
functionalities available and to improve security and
convenience.
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By GlobalDataThese developments, along with the
fact many countries are moving to EMV, has created a far more
extensive testing environment for the ATM, which in turn means that
manual testing is no longer viable; instead automated testing is
gaining popularity.
And that is good news for
Scotland-based Level Four, a leading consultancy specialising in
automated ATM testing, servicing retail banks around the world such
as Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland, Bank of America, CIBC and
South Africa’s Standard Bank.
In February, Level Four announced
an update to its BRIDGE:test, Regression Test Manager and ATM
Developer products to help banks maintain higher levels of ATM
uptime and offer a more complete service.
According to Kerr, despite the
growing importance of electronic and mobile banking, banks
increasingly view the ATM as complementary to new methods of
banking.
From Level Four’s perspective, the
biggest focus for the ATM industry this year is the need for banks
to integrate the ATM channel with other banking services, and the
biggest change to their ATM priorities has been to increase efforts
in bringing new services to market via the ATM.
In a survey conducted on behalf of
Level Four in March, almost half of the respondents stated this as
their biggest focus, more important to them than executing a
multi-vendor strategy, reducing ATM downtime or upgrading to new IT
infrastructure.
Sixty-three% of respondents
highlighted that the biggest change to their ATM priorities has
been to increase efforts in bringing new services to market via the
ATM.
“Whereas previous years’ results
highlighted a focus on reducing ATM downtime, what we’re now seeing
is a shift towards developing the technological capability of the
channel in order to offer customers a greater number of services
and to a higher standard,” said Kerr.
“While issues such as minimising
downtime must not be ignored, these results reflect the advances
that banks and ATM providers have made in this area. Having
resolved some of the technical glitches through solutions such as
automated testing, forward thinking institutions not only see the
growing revenue opportunity of the channel, but they also have the
capacity to act on it.”
Investment in the ATM channel has
increased in the past two years, the main aims being to generate
increased revenue and improve customer experience at the ATM.
“These results demonstrate what
those of us working in the industry have known for a long time.
Investment in the ATM channel is increasing and far from competing
with new methods of banking such as mobile and online, forward
thinking banks and ATM providers see these channels as
complementary and are working to bring them together.
“The ATM remains one of the most
used banking services. The key to maintaining customer reliance on
the channel, however, will lie in banks and ATM providers being
able to successfully manage this increased level of functionality
without negatively impacting reliability or availability.”
Increasingly, Level Four is working
with the ATM manufacturers to bring testing further up the food
chain. By taking testing further upstream, such as in the case of
Barclays’ ATM refresh project, Level Four worked with Wincor
Nixdorf and around 5,000 automated test cases were developed.
“It was a win-win for the bank and
the ATM manufacturer and saved a huge amount of time and money,”
concluded Kerr.
Generally, high levels of customer
satisfaction with the ATM channel was borne out by the Ernst and
Young global survey of customer behaviour (see E&Y hails
new era in customer expectation).
With the exception of the German market, where customer
satisfaction with the ATM channel was a dismal 22%, almost every
other major banking market reported ATM satisfaction levels of 80%
or more (see chart, below).
