Investing in services for the benefit of other businesses’ customers is not usually high on the agenda for bosses.
Nor is opening expensive branches in places otherwise abandoned by rivals and peers, but that has not deterred Newcastle Building Society and its chief executive Andrew Haigh.
This week the region's largest building society announced it will a pilot scheme designed to tackle a lack of financial services in some communities by introducing special terminals at two of its branches, allowing customers of any bank to access services.
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The mutual's Gosforth High Street branch and its new Knaresborough branch will receive the OneBanks terminals that will serve personal and business customers of all major banks - allowing them to withdraw cash, deposit coins and notes, move funds and pay bills.
"Nobody else is going to do it," says Mr Haigh.
"Being present in the community is really important to us and that builds a different relationship with our customers. We want to be part of the fabric of the region, really. We can't just hang on to the past, we need to come up with a very different idea of what a branch is and what a branch does."
Since 2015, about 4,000 海角视频 bank and building society branches have closed, and a further 220 are due to shut this year. Behind it is the growth of online banking.
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But while the trend towards cashless transactions may have been accelerated by the pandemic, a significant part of the population - up to five million adults according to the Bank of England - still rely on cash day-to-day. And that, Mr Haigh says, is a significant factor in the debate about how to rejuvenate high streets that is not always acknowledged.
He said: "High streets need access to cash. If you're a small business, for example a coffee shop, you have to be able to bank cash at the end of the day. As champions of the high street we've acknowledged that something has to change on the high street, it can't just be that banks keep abandoning it."
But bringing branches back to locations that others have found too challenging requires fresh thinking and a model that brings costs down. And that means sharing spaces - as is the case in Knaresborough which is within the town's library and at the forthcoming Tynemouth branch, which will also sit within a library and community hub.
The concept was first launched back in 2016 when Newcastle Building Society opened up in Yarm library - a move that Mr Haigh described as a "real experiment" but one that proved successful as it quickly became the mutual's fastest growing branch.
Similar branches in Hawes, in the Yorkshire Dale, and Wooler, in North Northumberland, followed, in towns otherwise deserted by high street banks.
Mr Haigh explained: "It's about making sure you're in somewhere where people actually go. In those two instances we shared space with libraries and police stations. It's about being part of a hub. This next step is an extension of this thinking.
"We absolutely believe that face-to-face financial services are still really important, and still really valued by people. Yes, there are more and more transactions happening online and that's the same for our customers - we have a strong digital presence. However, there are times when people want to come into a branch and want to talk to a real life person about their finances."
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"We've been really keen to keep the concept of the high street branch alive but that means you have to innovate and you just have to think differently. It's not about trying to ignore those changes [to online transactions] but its about thinking differently and coming up with a new approach.
The OneBanks Hub allows customers of any bank to pay in coins and notes and withdraw cash as long as their account provider is connected to open banking.
Is the idea commercially risky? Mr Haigh doesn't think so and points out that while his building society competes with banks for mortgage lending, it's not a provider of current accounts and therefore not direct competition.
"We think there's a significant role to play and we're really happy to work with other organisations to make these things possible. It won't work everywhere, but so far we've been really, really encouraged by the progress," he said.
Newcastle Building Society's piloting of the scheme comes at a time when many of its savers will be feeling the pinch as North East households face a rising cost of living.
Mr Haigh added: "We're definitely moving into some quite challenging times for people. As an organisation we continue to perform well but we're really mindful of just how difficult it is for customers out there. So, one of the things we can do is commit to providing financial advice on the high street.
"We're also keen to find ways that help people aspire to owning their own home. We launched two products last year. Deposit Unlock, which is an innovative mortgage product designed to help people with a small deposit be able to access a mortgage on a new build property. We were also one of the first lenders to support the Government's 'first home' scheme which provides discounted properties for first time buyers. They are targeted at people such as our key workers and there is a discount on the property of at least 30% - so its a way of those people getting into their first home. And of course there's our lifetime ISAs that help people save for a deposit.
"It is a difficult time and as a lender the key thing for us is to be lending responsibly, making sure people do have the capacity to keep up with a mortgage over time."