How Security Professionals Can Drive Success for Banking Organizations

The Multi-Purpose Security Tech Stack

As a banking security professional, you are well aware of the enabling technologies making waves in your industry. However, as security technology – like video analytics — continues to advance, tools that were once siloed in your division are now evolving to provide organizational change and business impact across every department. Because safety and security are the foundation for banking success, it is not just important to adopt and implement advanced technology that critically enables your teams, but it is vital that you are also empowered to bring an evidence-based playbook to your leadership that proves the value of your technology investments for the entire organization. Let’s dig in and help you become a champion for change in your banking institution.

Video Analytics for Physical Banking Security

Before we can understand the impact of intelligent video analytics across a banking organization, we must first explore the scope of this critical investment for security.

In financial institutions, banking security professionals must maintain situational awareness and detect threats such as unauthorized intrusion, property damage, and theft. Security staff typically achieve these goals by using video surveillance to monitor entrances and exits, track pedestrians and vehicles, and monitor access to certain areas using video surveillance.

But video surveillance systems alone have limited impact for banking security because:

• Video cameras produce more footage than staff have time to review
• Actively monitoring an entire network of cameras in real-time is unrealistic
• Human operators are prone to error when reviewing large amounts of video data

However, by adding intelligent video analytics to existing surveillance infrastructure, banks are empowered to make the most of all their video data. Powered by Deep Learning and Artificial Intelligence, video analytics software processes video, identifies objects in the video footage (people, vehicles, and other objects), and indexes them so that footage can be easily and quickly searched and analyzed. These capabilities empower banking security professionals to pinpoint relevant details, extract crucial data, and accelerate incident investigations with concrete video intelligence.

The Security Technology Dilemma

Despite the uncontestable need for banking security, banking security professionals often face constrained budgets for new security technology because it’s difficult to prove their ROI. However, as video analytics continues to become a critical business tool across numerous industries, security professionals have a unique opportunity to strategically shift the way organizations approach security technology acquisitions.

Beyond Security: Video Analytics for Bank Optimization

1. Understand Trends with Data Aggregation

Video analytics can be used to build visualized reports based on data collected from existing video surveillance infrastructure. For instance, features like people counting can help banks understand traffic flow and crowding by monitoring the number of people entering and exiting a building or within a predefined area of the bank.

Additionally, the ability to filter objects in video and aggregate the data into intelligence dashboards enables banks to understand specific trends or demographic data, such as the number of men versus women customers. Some video analytics platforms also enable enhanced situational awareness and response with customizable classification filters. Custom classifications allow users to train their system to granularly differentiate between classes — such as people in a bank uniform or specific armored vehicles – so they can optimize operations.

2. Optimize Traffic Flow and Space Utilization

Banks can effectively map the customer journey and gain insights into how clients navigate their facilities using features like people counting, dwell time analysis, and common paths. For example, banks can use heatmaps to determine which deposit counters receive the highest traffic volume and understand why other counters are underutilized. Bank management can also use video analytics see where customers tend to linger while waiting for meetings. Understanding customer dwell patterns empowers management to optimize their layout to strategically meet customer needs.

3. Improve Wait and Response Times 

There is not much that can derail a customer’s experience like long wait times. According to a survey by Verint more than half of bank customers will only wait up to 10 minutes for service before leaving a branch. Video analytics can be used to improve wait and response times by providing data about how long customers are actually waiting for different bank services.

For example, by using people counting or group detection capabilities, banks can receive alerts when individuals or groups start to gather. This functionality is invaluable for managing teller queues or clients waiting on a financial advisor, loan officer, or other bank personnel. Upon receiving a real-time alert, staff can respond promptly to minimize wait times and enhance overall customer satisfaction.

4. Enhance Parking Lot and Drive Thru Operations

Banks know that the customer experience begins before an individual ever reaches the door. Video analytics empowers bank branches to analyze vehicle movements within parking lots and drive-thru lanes using common paths features. By visualizing common paths from video surveillance footage, bank management can see the most used drive-thru lanes, while path analysis capabilities reveal traffic violations like illegal turns or one-way violations. This data can support informed decision-making for changes needed outside of a banking facility.

The Multi-Site Advantage

Although many financial institutions operate across multiple branches, banks often lack a centralized way to share data for informed decision making. However, as the video analytics industry has become more robust, some providers offer multi-site solutions for unprecedented enterprise insight. Operating from a centralized hub, multi-site video analytics empower banks to simplify management, centralize alerting, and aggregate comprehensive data across their entire organization, locally and globally.

Becoming a Champion for Change

The strategic alignment of security technology investments with broader business objectives is paramount for banking institutions seeking to thrive in a competitive landscape. As a banking security professional, you can now optimize your technology stack by strategically transforming your investments from cost centers to revenue generators for enhanced business impacts.

Interested in learning more about how security professionals are becoming champions for change across diverse industries? Watch the webinar.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in September 2019, and has been refreshed and updated for accuracy.