Your Friendly Computer

In U.S. banking, more than in most other lines of business, computers have freed employees from considerable drudgery by taking over routine paperwork and bookkeeping. Now the machines will begin to do much more important chores for many banks. The First National Bank of Atlanta, one of the South's largest, has started a computer service that could help hundreds of small bankers make higher-level management decisions.

The service, called Dynabank, is a form of computer time sharing that ties smaller banks into a large IBM storehouse of money-management data. By operating a special electric typewriter connected by telephone line to a computer center, a small-town banker can get a printout of information about conditions in distant bond and money markets, as well as economic forecasts for the nation or his region, and other data. If he is thinking of buying bonds, Dynabank will quote prices and yields of issues. If he wants to sell, the computer can tell him the market value of his own bank's portfolio. Dynabank advises what investment shifts to make, depending on the bank's tax situation, assets, liabilities and flow of business. Should the bank experience an unexpected drop in deposits, the computer can recommend steps to tide it over.

After testing the system in four small Southern banks, First National demonstrated it to a group of U.S. bankers. The response exceeded expectations. Though prepared for only ten initial orders at most, First National has already won 22 contracts. New banks are joining the Dynabank system at the rate of two a day, as equipment becomes available. Eventually, First National hopes to draw banks throughout the U.S. into a computer network for exchanging information. Says H. Monty Osteen, one of the executives who helped develop the system: "To a large degree, management has been reluctant to use computers as anything more than big adding machines. This has been because management generally does not understand computers. We have adapted the computer to bank management--not bank management to the computer."

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