Von's owner in pact with Canadian bank

SUN STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS

TORONTO -- Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce reached an agreement with Safeway Inc. to open banking kiosks in several of the supermarket chain's stores to gain customers.

The Toronto-based bank will offer banking services through automated machines, telephones, personal computers and in-store pavilions or free-standing kiosks to Safeway shoppers in Sacramento and San Jose, Calif., and Denver later this summer.

Debra Lambert, Safeway's spokeswoman, said Safeway owns 26 Von's stores in Las Vegas, but didn't have immediate plans to offer such banking services in Nevada. Safeway also owns eight Safeway stores in Northern Nevada.

"But there is potential for CIBC to expand into Nevada to service Safeway customers," she said.

CIBC, whose kiosks will be installed in supermarkets that don't have existing bank branches, hopes to attract Safeway's customers by offering cheaper services online while providing them with a physical point of contact.

"We've had in-store banking services for our customers' convenience since the late 1980s. This is more an electronic format for our customers and will offer a full range of financial services including loans and mortgages," Lambert said.

"It's another step toward our goal to more than double our retail customer base in the next few years at low cost," John Hunkin, CIBC's chairman and chief executive, said in a statement.

In February 1998, CIBC began a service called President's Choice Financial to sell no-fee checking and saving accounts, lines of credit and personal loans to customers through in-store kiosks. With 194 kiosks set up after two years, the joint venture now has 322,000 customers and is adding 16,000 more each week.

The bank exported the model to the United States last October, when it created Marketplace Bank with Winn-Dixie in Florida. The companies planned to open 40 kiosks immediately after the introduction of the service. In-store kiosks cost a quarter of what it takes run a full-service branch because they have fewer staff and electronic transactions are less expensive to process.

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