popular name for the fixed assets owned by a bank, either owned or leased, including branch offices, and the back office. Generally it refers to retail offices or branch offices in conventional multibranch banking. Branch banking has a high number of distribution points for retail customers, at a high fixed cost. Contrast with Automated Teller Machine (ATM); home banking.
a physical business location as distinguished from a Web site.
the physical property; often contrasted with intangibles, sometimes contrasted with cyberspace.
Examples: An educational institution may choose to concentrate on instructional quality factors such as student-teacher ratio rather than on maintaining or adding to its physical plant, which may be described as a bricks and mortar issue. Barnes and Noble bookstore offers shoppers the opportunity to visit bricks and mortar stores as well as its Web site, whereas Amazon.com sells its wares only via the Internet.
