Drive-through: Banking goes the burger way

With the sparkling diamond business in Surat stealing time away, diamantaires could hardly manage frequent visits and long hours at banks in the city. Until one day Rajkot Nagarik Sahakari Bank Limited (RNSBL) introduced a drive-through facility at its branch. Now, the traders don't have to get out of their cars for most of their bank transactions at the RNSBL branch in Surat.

The Rajkot-based co-operative bank has been offering the drive-through facility at one branch each in Rajkot and Surat. Without getting out the car, customers can deal in cash, cheque or even demat transactions. A concept more popular at quick service restaurants (QSRs) like McDonalds, drive-through arguably being used for the first time in banking by RNSBL.

With about 50,000-60,000 account holders at its Surat branch itself, the bank was also witnessing a growing parking problem. In a bid to ease parking woes at its branch and offer speedy transactions the bank began experimenting with drive-through facility.

While the service is being offered at just two branches, the bank intends to add such drive-through facilities in other branches in Gujarat in near future. To experiment, the bank first introduced this service at its demat facility branch in Rajkot where more than 35,000 demat holders of the bank could enjoy the facility. Later, RNSBL introduced it in Surat for cash and cheque transactions as well.

What's more, such has been the success of the drive-through facility that the average of 20-25 customers per day at the demat division has risen to 40-50. "Per day on an average 40-50 customers visit our branch for demat related work and when market is good the same figure hovers around 100 per day," says Bhavesh Rajdev, branch manager of demat division, RNSBL.

In Surat any one can make cash transactions up to ' 1 lakh through drive-in banking, resulting in more than 70 customers at the window. "Account holders need not to come out from the car. You just drive in a car to the window and transact. Surat branch having about 50,000 to 60,000 accounts holders," says Rajdev. "Once I had gone to America where I saw this kind of banking and I thought to implement it in our Nagarik bank. We first started the drive-through banking in Surat 12 years ago," reminisces Jyotindra Mehta, chairman of Gujarat Urban Co-operative Banks Federation (GUCBF) who introduced the drive-through banking concept in Gujarat.

"We will implement drive-through banking facility in other branches too. We need to set up proper infrastructure and it will take some time," says Kalpak Maniyar, Chairman of RNSBL.