South Shore National Bank, which operates 14 offices in the South Shore area, has become the first bank in the northern United States to match the swift precision of electronic computing with familiar banking services.
Branches are located in Norwood, Quincy, Weymouth, Randolph, Holbrook, Avon, Braintree, and Wrentham. All offices will participate in South Shore National’s new electronic accounting program that employs a Burroughs Visible Record Computer System. Customer checks, whether they are the personal ThriftiCheck type or regular commercial, will be processed on the new computer system.
The computer also is capable of processing electronically all information necessary for savings, installment and mortgage loan accounting as well as for management reports. South Shore National Bank intends to utilize these capabilities at a later stage in their conversion to complete electronic accounting.
William J. Martin, president, said, “The Burroughs Visible Record Computer System is the first ever designed to work directly with traditional bank records, thereby Imposing no burden on customers during the transition. We are the second bank in the nation to put this unique computer system into operation “
Set up in the bank’s new electronic data processing center in the Quincy main office, the computer system will perform calculations at speeds in the thousands-of-a-second range on records for some 30,000 checking account customers in the South Shore area.
“There is very little to market in a banking institution,” Martin said. “Primarily, what we can offer our customers is service and dependability.”
“Since these characteristics of a bank don’t come in attractive colors, wash and wear fabrics or new lightweight metals, they pass unnoticed About the only way you recognize the value of good service is when it fails to appear, We don’t intend to put our customers in this position.” said Martin.
He revealed that without proper precautions — streamlining operating methods and continually taking advantage of the best of modern accounting equipment — the rising volume of paper to be handled in the normal banking day could easily swamp conventional procedures.