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Members of the Central Ohio IFMA Chapter took a “behind-the-scenes” tour of Discover Financial Services’ (DFS) Operations Center in New Albany May 14, covering areas where 2,500 people work, and mechanical and data processing areas that help make their work enjoyable.
DFS is a business unit of Morgan Stanley & Co, and offers a variety of credit cards such as Discover Classic, Gold, and Platinum. Additional services include Discover CDs and Money Market accounts, auto insurance, and home loans. DFS has approximately 16,000 employees, 50 million cardholders and some four million merchant and cash access locations.
The new 330,000-square-foot New Albany center was built to house over 3,500 employees. When opened in September, 1,700 employees were moved from offices above the Westland and Eastland shopping centers into the facility.
IFMA members toured the Lost Prevention and Merchant wings of the two-story building, and visited a number of areas that people working in the building have not see, including the facility’s uninterrupted power supply, its four generators, switchgear room, seven roof top units, backup battery bank, and data processing center.
The tour of the building was arranged by Kathy Merkle, facility manager and assisted by Marty Taynor, vendor relations manager; Gary Moore; senior operating engineer; Ann Ruzicka, finance specialist; and Tony Romano, assistant chief engineer.
Most of the New Albany employees—about 1,600—work in the Lost Prevention Wing, providing services for cardholders. These employees are among the company’s youngest and least tenured with an average age of 22 and employment of six months. Nevertheless, those employed here collect $1 million an hour.
The Merchants’ Wing is composed of about 500 employees whose average age is in the mid-30s and the length of time with DFS is 12 years. And as their designation states, these employees deal with merchants and merchant-related concerns.
Additionally, the rambling state-of-the-art facility has its own cafeteria, health clinic, fitness facility, sundries store, drycleaner, and automated teller machine. It was the first DFS operations center to have a nursing staff on site.