24-Hour Working Concept in Banks: A Data-Driven Feasibility and Impact Assessment
This paper evaluates the feasibility of introducing a -hour working concept in select bank branches to address growing after-hours customer demand and persistent needs for in-person verification, advisory, and dispute resolution. A quantitative framework is developed by integrating (i) time-band demand decomposition across a 24-hour cycle, (ii) Erlang-C (M/M/c) queueing analysis for staffing and servicelevel assurance under time-varying arrivals, and (iii) investment appraisal using incremental costrevenue modeling, payback, ROI, and NPV. A 25-branch, metro-focused pilot dataset is used to demonstrate end-to-end calculations and decision metrics. Results indicate a mean after-hours share of 55.54% (range 51.6%-58.7%), supporting the case for extended access in urban markets. Queueingbased staffing designed to cap utilization maintains stable performance across time bands, while the financial module shows that 24/7 branches achieve positive incremental monthly profit and 20/25 achieve positive 24-month NPV under the stated assumptions. The findings support a selective scale-up strategy in high-demand corridors, with managerial emphasis on shift design, safety and incentives, service bundling by time band, and measured awareness-building to maximize adoption and value creation.