What Does a Bank Branch Look Like — in Mongolia?
Mongolia, hotbed for … bank branches?
Far from Mongolia today, Virgin Money, Richard Branson’s UK financial services venture, opened the doors on a new branch in Central London. The new branch was made to look like the inside — brace yourself — of a Virgin Atlantic airplane.
“The new [Virgin Money] lounge pushes the boundaries of banking even further,” said Jayne-Anne Gadhia, chief executive, Virgin Money, said a press release. “Where else can you go, catch up with friends and enjoy a cup of tea while sitting in an airline interior?”
While we are not sure whether the underlying message here is that customers will be spending a long time cooped up in Virgin Money branches, the new outlet close to Piccadilly Circus is not the story here.
It turns out Virgin Money didn’t design the branch on its own. Rather, it used a firm called Allen International, a design shop with offices in London and Singapore. Allen, founded in 1992, has designed branches for Bank of China, CIBC, and Bank of Ireland, and this summer won the contract to redo Emirates NBD’s branches.
It has also recently designed branches for TDB, which is located in — brace yourself again — Mongolia. So what do the new branches of TDB, officially the Trade and Development Bank of Mongolia, look like? Rest assured, we at Bank Innovation can provide … enjoy:
