Have you nothing smaller?

One service provided by Bank of Ireland constantly annoys me. When you use one of their ATMs it will always make up your withdrawal in the minimum number of notes possible - in other words, in the largest denominations possible. Thus, if you withdraw €200, you’ll get 4 x €50 notes. Not popular when you proffer one to pay €1.60 for a newspaper.

My brother works for that bank and, a couple of months ago, I told him of my irritation, contrasting it with experience in France where a similar €200 withdrawal would typically include some €20 & €10 notes.

Imagine my horror when he confessed that he is the cash management guru who devised and implemented this cash dispenser strategy. I gave him a piece of my mind about how customer-unfocused this strategy is. I could see from his reaction that he had no idea what I was talking about.

Now I’ve discovered that, at the end of March 2007, my brother addressed a European banking conference in London on this very topic, described as follows: “Optimising cash management at ATMs The replenishment of ATMs, and the cost of cash inside each machine, are two of the largest components of deployers’ overall costs. To what extent can cash management software improve operational efficiency?”
I haven’t ruled out fratricide if I find that continental banks start to follow his benighted example.