Withdrawn

ANZ is replacing its Pahiatua branch with an ATM, and a union is calling the move a ‘‘slap in the face’’ to the staff who have worked hard to keep it open.

ANZ is replacing its Pahiatua branch with a smart ATM, but a union is calling the move a ‘‘slap in the face’’ to the staff who have worked hard to keep it open.

Three part-time and one fulltime staff will lose their jobs and ANZ customers will have to rely on mobile and internet banking, once the branch closes on Friday next week.

Pahiatua On Track chairwoman Louise Powick said the community would certainly feel its loss.

‘‘There’s a lot of people here who don’t have internet access. We also have an ageing population, and elderly people tend to prefer to use branches so they can do their banking in person.’’

Kiwibank, Bank of New Zealand and Westpac are still maintaining branches in the town.

‘‘We’ve been lucky to keep the banks we have for so long, really,’’ Powick said.

ANZ communications manager Emma Mellow said it was no longer viable for the bank to keep the branch open.

‘‘We’ve worked hard to maintain a branch, [but] monthly transaction volumes at Pahiatua have decreased 37 per cent since 2010.

‘‘The majority of ANZ Pahiatua customers do their banking at other branches in the region already, and most use internet banking.’’

Mellow said the elderly were more tech-savvy than they got credit for, and anyone who couldn’t access the online or mobile services could call the bank’s national contact centre.

First Union organiser Dion Martin said the closure was a slap in the face for the four staff who had made repeated sacrifices and concessions to keep the branch open.

Martin wasn’t buying that Pahiatua’s branch was performing particularly poorly in in-person transactions – in fact, it was doing better than most on average, he said.

Figures ANZ provided in the consultation pack put the bank’s national average decline in transactions at 32 per cent since 2012, or an average drop of 6.4 per cent a year.

Despite transactions at the Pahiatua branch falling 16 per cent in the past year, it was only losing 5.3 per cent per year on average.

Martin said ANZ made a record after-tax profit of $1.9 billion in the year to October 2017.

‘‘It is the largest profit ever seen from a New Zealand bank.

‘‘It’s not like they can’t afford to keep the branch open as a community service. They’re just pulling out to further maximise profits.’’

Martin said it was part of a pattern of banks abandoning rural towns, as the competing banks treated them like hot potatoes.

‘‘Nobody wants to be the last bank to pull out, because they get all the protests and anger.‘‘

Protests and acrimonious public meetings were exactly what Westpac got when it announced the planned closure of its branch in the Canterbury town of Fairlie in August. That decision left the town without a single bank or ATM.

It was a similar story when Westpac pulled out of Ruatoria in 2015, leaving a large swath of the East Coast without a bank, Martin said. Credit Union stepped into the breach.