MidSouth Bank: An NCR Case Study

The customer

MidSouth Bancorp, Inc. is a bank holding company headquartered in Lafayette, Louisinana, with total assets of $936.8 million as of December 31, 2008. Through its whollyowned bank subsidiary, MidSouth Bank, N.A., the company offers complete banking services to commercial and retail customers in south Louisiana and southeast Texas. It has 34 locations in Louisiana and Texas and more than 170 ATMs. The group is community oriented and focuses primarily on offering commercial and consumer loan and deposit services to individuals, and small and middle market businesses.

Established in 1985, MidSouth Bank has 27 offices extending along the Interstate 10 corridor in south Louisiana located in Lafayette (9), Baton Rouge (3), New Iberia (3), Lake Charles (2), Sulphur, Jeanerette, Jennings, Thibodaux, Larose, Opelousas, Breaux Bridge, Cecilia, Morgan City and Houma. Additionally, the company has seven full-service offices in the southeast region of Texas, including Houston, Beaumont (3), Vidor, College Station and Conroe. It also has a mortgage loan center in Conroe.

The challenge

Every time a MidSouth teller visits a branch vault to deposit or collect cash, their window is essentially closed. This obviously has a negative impact on customer service and branch efficiency. MidSouth wants to improve staff effectiveness and productivity within its branch network. Their challenge, therefore, is to find a practical way of increasing branch efficiency (in particular the number of transactions their tellers perform per hour) as well as finding ways to address staff effectiveness. The question, of course, is how.