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With self-service coin counters, banks can afford to be far more efficient than they were before. These machines allow customers to bring in coinage and covert it into money they can either deposit or redeem. People like grabbing loose change and saving it, as it can build up over time into real cash. Banks previously required customers who wanted to make deposits out of pennies and nickels to sort and place their coins into rolls before making a deposit or exchange. Now, these counters do all the work for both the customer and the banker. It frees up time for the former, while giving the latter the chance to shine in new and different roles.

Universal bankers have self-service coin counters to thank

In the banking industry, there has been a shift in what roles the people who work in branches can perform. Bankrate noted that with the use of ATMs, online banking, direct deposit and debit cards are replacing checks en masse, teller transactions are declining significantly. To counter this trend, financial institutions are looking to make these branches focus more on customer service and providing other products such as loans or mortgages. More importantly, there needs to be a role for these tellers beyond handling customer transactions.

This is where the universal banker steps in, according to banking publication Bancology. Essentially a cross-trained teller, the universal banker functions as both a teller and a customer service representative. On the one hand, it gives these people flexibility in their roles, right down to their schedules. However, there's more to the role than that: Customers can be greeted by this person, and he or she can serve as their personal teller, service provider and financial counselor in one position. This not only reduces labor costs, but it also makes the customer banking experience much more amenable than it would be under normal circumstances.

Of course, universal bankers require fewer roles on the teller side for this to work effectively. Coin-based deposits can be one of them, thanks to self-service coin counters. Instead of constantly sorting and making sure that the customer actually packed the coins properly, these machines do all the sorting and counting work for them. More importantly, it can translate into a direct deposit into a person's bank account, making their money safe.