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County Bank Announces New Facillity with a New Generation in Banking
Williamsburg Mayor Frank Murphy joined County Bank Chairman Terry Greenley and Senior Vice President Dan O'Rourke in breaking ground for the bank's new branch office building at 500 North Highland Street in Williamsburg on Monday, November 9. The new building will replace the bank's current office on the same site.
"Today marks a significant step forward for County Bank in Williamsburg and Iowa County," said O'Rourke. "We've enjoyed great success since opening this branch in Williamsburg in 2006. This is the next phase in our growth and we look forward to playing an even more active role in the community."
The 2500-square-foot facility is a design/build project by Russell Construciton of Davenport, Iowa. Ryan Andresen is the Senior Project Manager for Russell and Mark Seeley Construction of Sigourney is the bank's project manager. Local contractors will be used where possible in the construction project.
Bank officials emphasized the new bank facility will be a change from a traditional branch bank. Trends in the banking industry show that self-service and technology are driving basic banking transactions like getting cash and making deposits and customers have 24-hour options for conducting their banking business wtih access to online bankings and ATMs.
"Todays customer does day-to-day banking in a different way than they use to," said Greenley. "The fact that more people are banking online and via smartphone means they don't visit their bank as often. This made us really stop and think about how our new branch office should look and function. But we also want to make it clear that our personal banking philosophy means that personal bankers and loan officers will be on hand during regular business hours to serve the customers that prefer to bank in person."
As part of the move to the next generation of banking, the bank has already introduced "PAT", County Bank's Personal Automated Teller, in Williamsbur.g PAT is a marriage of technology and convenience that adds the friendly, helpful service of a personal banker with the speed and convenience of a traditional ATM. PAT provides personally assisted service through real-time secure audio/video communications with a personal banker in the bank's Sigourney- based call center. County Bank also has PAT locations in Montezuma and Sigourney.
PAT is available in both drive up and walk up models. In Williamsburg the walk up PAT is in the lobby of the bank's current office and the drive up is in the current drive up lane until construction is completed and the drive up PAT moves to a permanent location on the site. PAT will take over the services now provided at the bnak's drive up window. Hours of personally assisted service will be available from 8:00 am until 4:30 pm Monday thru Thursday and until 5:30 pm on Friday with regular Saturday 8:30 am until noon hours. ATM functions of PAT will continue on a 24/7/365 schedule. County Bank customers are able to access PAT without a debit card for personal banker assisted transactions and both customers and non-customers can use PAT as a traditional ATM. Initially PAT's deposit features will be limited to accepting customer deposits during personally assisted transactions.
"We're proud and excited to be one of the first banks in Iowa and the first in our area to offer this new way of banking," said County Bank President Tom Bates. "This is part of our ongoing effort to keep pace with providing the kinds of services our customers ask for. And I want to assure our customers they will be communicating directly and securely with a County Bank staff member and not talking to a stranger in another state."
County Bank Vice President Randy Osweiler stressed that they Williamsburg branch office will be open and fully functional during construction. "We want customers and members of the community to stop by our offices and check on our construction progress. We also want them to meet PAT and see how they can make their own banking easier and more convenient. We'll be doing demonstrations on PAT and our new self-service coin counters and also helping customers sign up for online banking, mobile banking and eStatements."
County Bank is a locally owned community bank headquartered in Sigourney. Other locations are in Deep River, Gibson, Montezuma and Williamsburg.