depositors which could make the savings passbook obsolete.

Senior vice president, retail banking, Mr. Alan Richardson said the bank is "exploring the savings statement option'' and expects to make an announcement by the middle of this month.

"We are considering the savings statement product for fairly imminent introduction,'' he said.

"For those customers very comfortable with electronic access and for those who do not want to have to come to the bank to have their accounts updated every time they carry out a savings transaction, the statement savings account would afford them that option.'' It would mean that account holders would no longer have to keep a pass book but could keep their records current through statements mailed out on a monthly basis.

"In addition they would be able to access information about their savings account off the ATM (Automatic Teller Machine),'' he said. "It will, for the bank, cut down on costs of maintaining pass book reading equipment.

"Some customers come into the bank and carry out savings transactions on a fairly routine basis, without their passbook, and then of course when the pass book is brought in, it has to have a multiple number of transactions updated on it. This takes time.

"People are just accessing their accounts through the ATM on a frequent basis for a variety of transactions these days, so the physical suppression of the old pass book savings account will be of tremendous benefit for both the bank and the customers, who are now quite comfortable with electronic access and receiving statements on their account.'' Mr. Richardson said the bank is in the final stages of considering implementation. He said the service is popular in North America, and that banks in other countries are going to more and more forms of electronic access.

"The mini-statement at the ATM, which we now offer for savings or current accounts, is just a means of providing electronic access to information, obviating the need to physically have to produce updates on the traditional passbooks and other forms of bank statements.'' Mr. Richardson conceded that there may still be some elderly customers who have grown up with a passbook, who prefer to go to the bank directly.

The bank last year began providing a pin-point service which allows credit card customers to access their available balance at any hour of the day, through simply telephoning specific numbers.

The Bank of Butterfield has a service called Card Line, which enables Island Card holders to have the same service. It is expected that the service will be extended to the international credit cards, Visa and MasterCard, soon.

In fact, a spokesman for Butterfield said that after investing heavily in technology over the last year, it is expected that a number of new products will be introduced for retail banking customers during 1995.

Late last year, the bank introduced a series of charges for savings book transactions to encourage more people to use their ATM cards.