OceanFirst Bank, one of the largest regional banks in New Jersey, has selected Dolphin Debit to support its non-branch ATMs as part of an effort to enhance service delivery to customers.

Dolphin Debit, the full-service ATM management company, now administers to all the offsite OceanFirst ATMs. The Dolphin-managed OceanFirst ATMs are in locations such as hospitals, government buildings, and a retirement community. OceanFirst’s branch ATMs are currently located throughout New Jersey, as well as in New York City and Philadelphia.

The migration to Dolphin for the non-branch ATMs was driven by a desire to relieve some of the operational burden on the bank’s staff, said James Goodstein, Vice President and Product Manager, Digital Banking. He also acknowledged Dolphin’s pricing model, which he said makes it easy for the bank to work with key customers in terms of setting up additional non-branch ATM locations in the future.

“It is a good feeling to know it is now much easier to implement a new ATM engagement with a client who would like to add an OceanFirst Bank ATM,” Goodstein said.

At this point, about half of OceanFirst’s total branch fleet of machines are ITMs, interactive teller machines, as the bank strives to leverage technology to provide more services to customers and extend its reach, Goodstein noted.

“Our focus going forward is ITMs, or video tellers, because they allow us to offer longer business hours, until 7 p.m. weekdays,” Goodstein said. “Our video tellers can do 99 percent of what an employee can do for customers in a branch, which is why we are committed to enhancing our digital offering.”

OceanFirst is in discussions with Dolphin about ITMs going forward, as part of a further broadening of the bank’s plans to maximize resources, Goodstein added.

Before choosing to work with Dolphin Debit, OceanFirst evaluated Dolphin and five other companies in a process that scored each vendor based on key criteria. Dolphin stood out above the other companies, making the vendor decision an easy one, Goodstein noted.

“Security was very important to us,” in the evaluation process, Goodstein explained, and Dolphin’s proposal “showed us they have a well-established IT organization, otherwise we wouldn’t have selected them.”

“As OceanFirst Bank is already seeing, outsourcing ATM operations takes the management burden off internal staff and lets them focus on more important priorities such as customer service and bank growth,” said Joe Woods, Vice President of Business Development for Dolphin Debit. “That is why banks continue to turn to us to handle their ATM fleets.”