"Building new financial services facilities is a constant in the industry, and this study bears that out; however, we are now seeing a real interest in eco-friendly building within the sector," said Mylle Mangum, CEO of IBT Enterprises, the survey's sponsor. "Executives are generally interested in incorporating green elements into projects large and small. We've reached a point where building green does not always come with a cost-prohibitive price tag, and being green can still give a financial institution the features they desire."

When asked which features financial institutions most want to incorporate in new and existing branches, executives tended to focus on ways they can further deliver services to their clientele.

The majority of the group said adding ATMs (69%), educational or community-oriented marketing (59%), investment services (56%) and technology/Internet kiosks (56%) were of most interest to them.

Seven in 10 executives polled said being green is important to their financial institution because "we are all stewards of the earth; we are doing what is right" and nearly 68% say they are green because they "realize benefits from the lower operation costs."

Some of the green initiatives financial services executives report their facilities participate in include:

-Using energy-efficient lighting, including compact fluorescent lights (81%),

-Having an active recycling initiative (74%),

-Encouraging ride-sharing or public transportation for employees (62%), and

-Using environmentally friendly cleaning products (46%).

"Like many organizations banks and credit unions truly understand the benefits associated with going green," said Tom Tedrow, vice president of design and construction services for IBT. "We have found that green efforts tend to start small but grow into important initiatives."

In addition, 86% of financial services executives surveyed say being green is important to their clientele. The survey also found that when it comes to environmentally friendly services, there is still room for improvement both in breadth of offerings and overall use of such services.

For example, 90% of respondents report having paper avoidance programs like electronic billing, statements and online applications in place for their customers. However, 58% of executives reported less than a quarter of their customers utilize such programs, and only 16% said the majority of their customers take part in the programs.

Some institutions are offering environmentally friendly services in addition to paper avoidance programs. Nineteen percent have eco-friendly car loans, 17% offer eco-friendly home financing, and 8% have green credit cards where financial institutions make contributions to green initiatives based on spending.

"While the uptake of eco-friendly financial services has not been through the roof, we do see evidence that although a financial institution might build green and be green, it may not appear to be green if it does not effectively offer green services to its clientele," said Mangum. "The recent increase in environmentally-friendly services is just starting to emerge and financial services organizations are realizing there is a market for them. How large of a market it is will be seen in the coming years."

–[email protected]