It is without doubt that banks bear very little risk for robbery relative to the amount of money dispensed by Automated Teller Machines (ATMs). To my mind, the security risks relate to thieves who take advantage of gullible clients and secure their ATM cards before using that to clean up accounts. In addition, my view has been that in less secure places, a person using an ATM in a secluded place may be held up and robbed. As a result, it appeared to me that by transferring cash withdrawal processes towards these machines, the financial institutions have successfully externalized the risk of petty robbery to their clients.
However, I must have misjudged the temerity of thieves and their attraction for cash. According to a story in the Irish Times, an ATM was completely ripped off the walls and carried away in Kildare, Ireland. This turns around my crude theory that the weakness regarding ATMs was actually the human end. There are daring thieves out there who have probably invested in a whole arsenal of drills and impact tools in order to blow apart the machine that they took away.
Turning to the economics of incentives, is it that being unable to hold up people or the banks, the robbers opted to hold up the ATM?
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