Citizens Bank in New Kensington Giant Eagle slated to go virtual

Citizens will replace its bank branch inside the New Kensington Giant Eagle with a virtual assistant in January.

The “interactive teller machine” includes two-way video communication, said Mark Rendulic, Pittsburgh market president for Rhode Island-based Citizens.

With it, customers can do about 90% of what they would do in a traditional branch, which includes cashing checks, making loan payments, withdrawing large amounts of money, making changes to an account or address, ordering new debit cards and getting advice.

A full-service, staffed branch is about two miles away on Leechburg Road in Lower Burrell, where customers can do business that can’t be handled through the ITM, which includes opening an account and buying cashier’s checks, Rendulic said.

The change will happen as of Jan. 14, Citizens said in a letter sent to customers.

Citizens rolled out its first ITMs in February 2021 and now has 352 companywide. There are 31 in Western Pennsylvania, nearly all inside Giant Eagle stores.

Nearby virtual assistants can be found inside Giant Eagles in Allegheny Township, Monroeville, The Waterworks mall near Aspinwall and Verona.

Rendulic said they have been well-received.

“When we did the initial rollout to test the technology, we had human beings standing at the machines to help customers,” he said. “They very quickly adapted to it. The feedback has been quite good.”

Over the past year, Citizens closed 64 branches across its entire footprint, with 23 being replaced with virtual assistants, Rendulic said. He would not divulge whether other Pittsburgh-area locations will change to the virtual system but said he expects their number to increase.

“Customers have adapted their behavior in a digital world. We’ve seen branch transactions decline over the last several years,” Rendulic said. “Branches are increasingly a place to go for advice or to address a problem — fraud is a good example of that. It’s caused us over time to look at our network and reimagine it.”

Rendulic would not give specifics as to why the New Kensington Giant Eagle was chosen to be converted but said the Lower Burrell office being nearby factored into it.

“We believe we can successfully serve these customers through this interactive virtual channel,” he said.

The virtual assistant banking agents are U.S.-based and multilingual, Rendulic said. They will be available from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays.

Rendulic could not say how many people currently work at the Citizens branch inside the New Kensington Giant Eagle. He said they will be offered other jobs with Citizens, and that the bank has a long track record of finding affected employees new positions when they wish to stay with the company.

Branches will remain an important part of Citizens to deliver services to customers, Rendulic said. Even when customers open accounts digitally online, they’re less likely to do so the farther away they are from a branch.

“The physical presence of a branch within a reasonable distance, even if they are digitally inclined, is important to customers,” Rendulic said. “It’s human nature that they want to know they have a physical location to go to should they need to go to it.”