CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Charleston’s newest bank has embraced the future. MVB Bank opened its 10th location in West Virginia Thursday with its first location in Charleston.
“Being a bank that’s headquartered in West Virginia, we felt it was very necessary to be in the capital city,” said MVB Market President Jared Ferguson. “This is the biggest deposit base in West Virginia, the biggest city and has the most businesses. Overall if you want to be a bank in West Virginia and grow in West Virginia, we feel you have to be in Charleston.”
But customers will notice some things about MVB’s offices on Washington Street in downtown Charleston which are vastly different from traditional banking outlets. The new facility features state of the art technology using AIT Tellers. The machines are positioned in the drive thru and in the lobby, but instead of speaking to a person at a counter, you’re interacting with them on camera.
“It’s an interactive teller. You pick up a phone and talk to your teller at an off site location,” Ferguson explained. “They handle your transaction. It works just like you would do walking up to a teller window at a traditional banking platform, but that person is not in front of you, they are on a screen.”
Ferguson said however, for those who do wish to interact with someone in person, there are traditional tellers in the lobby as well. The AIT Teller can handle deposits,. withdrawals, check cashing, and some limited bill payment along with other normal duties of a bank teller. The machine can accept up to 40 bills at a time on a deposit. Checks can be deposited by taking a picture of and submitting. The bank also features full lending and commercial services on site as well.
The AIT system makes the bank more efficient and cost effective.
“It allows us to do multiple functions with the teller,” Ferguson said. “They’re not just sitting there waiting for people to come in, they are operating several locations.”
Ferguson said in the recent snowfall, the AIT Tellers in Charleston were able to cover the shifts of tellers at the company’s branch in Fairmont when the Fairmont employees couldn’t get to work.
Ferguson admits the new system may not be at first appealing to those who prefer traditional banking, but he added in another decade all banks will have similar automated systems.
“It may not be embraced as well where customers enjoy traditional banking,” he said. “But since this is the way banking will be done in the future, we felt we should do this here first instead of having a traditional banking system and retrofitting it down the road. This is the way banking will be done in the future.”