A branch is six problems

No, and you should not want them to. Our standing instruction is comply, do not pursue, observe carefully and produce an accurate account afterwards. Intervention at a teller line puts your staff and customers between two armed people. Every institution we work with holds the same position.

Deterrence and the hours around the edges. A uniformed armed presence changes which branches get selected in the first place, and it materially changes the risk during opening, closing and cash movements — which is where the actual exposure sits.

No. Banks, credit unions and their cash operations only. It is a narrow trade with its own regulatory obligations and its own failure modes, and we are more useful to you for not splitting attention.

We support the role rather than hold it. The Bank Protection Act designation sits with an officer of the institution — that is the point of it. We supply the survey work, the documentation and the annual report input that the designation requires.

Every zone walked at the hours it actually operates, including an opening and a closing. Sightlines, camera placement and coverage gaps, alarm and duress device placement and reachability, cash movement paths, lighting, and the vestibule after dark.

A common standard across the network with a per-branch annex, and a single point of contact above branch level. Branch managers should not each be negotiating their own arrangement.

Not necessarily. Cash-heavy branches, those with incident history and those in isolated locations usually warrant it. A low-volume branch inside a supermarket frequently does not, and we will say so.

We brief your staff on how to work with the officer — duress device use, what the officer will and will not do, and how the handover works at opening and closing. An officer nobody has been introduced to is half an officer.