The next airport terminal lounge or club you pass may also be a bank branch

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Nicolette Nelson was running late for her return flight to Fairbanks as she sprinted towards her gate at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG). Overcome by a medical issue, she didn't make it to her gate and wound up spending the night in a Cincinnati hospital. By the next day, she had recovered and awaited her flight home, but it was repeatedly delayed.

So Nelson spent hours of her delay in a quiet cubicle in an unlikely place — a bank — waiting for her flight and wiling away the time on electronic devices.

"It's been really, it's quiet and that is what I need," Nelson said.

Fifth Third Bank was trying to appeal to this type of traveler when it rechristened its 40-year-old CVG branch last month as a combination lounge and lending center. Weary travelers and constantly working entrepreneurs stake out prime spots in the bank away from the airport hubbub, while corporate travelers use the center to squeeze out more business.

"One woman wanted to rent my office to work," remembers Lisa Slocum, the airport Fifth Third Bank branch manager. Slocum directed the woman to other options in the branch.

Other customers use the bank on a purely transactional basis. On a recent day, Hannah Thelen and her mother, Ashley Thelen, were passing through on their way to Spain and stopped in to convert currency.

"I love the central location," Ashley Thelen said as she converted dollars to euros. 

It's a central location for a flyer, but a maze of trams, moving sidewalks, and concourses need to be navigated to get to it in Terminal B, and it is past the TSA checkpoint, so the branch doesn't get customers off the street.

Fifth-Third Bank isn't the first financial