Towns fear bank branch closures
Union says Westpac is mulling over 19 shutdowns nationwide as communities fight to retain services
Three towns will be left with no full-service bank branches if Westpac goes ahead with a raft of planned closures. Residents of Ranfurly and Fairlie will be left driving up to an hour to get to their nearest bank branch while people in Raglan will only have a limited service through Kiwibank if Westpac goes ahead with proposed branch shut-downs.
First Union says the bank is mulling 19 branch closures throughout the country and communities are being given no say over what will happen.
A spokeswoman for Westpac said it had no further comment to make until feedback had been received, reviewed and decisions were made about the branches. “At that point, staff and customers will be the first to know.”
Residents of Fairlie, near Timaru, held a meeting earlier this week and Ranfurly residents will hold a community rally tomorrow to protest at the potential closure of their local branch.
Tali Williams, national organiser finance for First Union, said residents would lose face to face contact with their bank if the branches were closed. The Kamo branch of Westpac could be closed and (inset) Murray Grimmer collecting signatures opposing the closure of Cherrywood’s Westpac branch. “It is a very sad thing.” While some transactions could be done online she said more complicated transactions like mortgages or investments still needed to be done face to face. Williams said people were also reluctant to switch banks because of the costs involved and the loss of relationships built up over time with their local branch staff.
Last week an 87-year-old Tauranga man collected 460 signatures in two days in an effort to stop the closure of his local Westpac branch. “What I’m growling about is that 75 per cent of the people who live around here are 70 years or older and they don’t want to go online banking because they don’t understand it,” said Murray Grimmer, who sat outside his local supermarket in Cherrywood for two days to get support.
Amie Pont, who owns a shop in Ranfurly and is leading the rally by the local community, said the proposal by Westpac to close its local branch had come as a shock.
“As a community we feel we are entering into a growth phase. Tourism is growing . . . we’ve had a bit of disbelief.”
Pont said the branch served not just the local Ranfurly community which had a population of around 800 but 10 other communities.
The nearest bank branch would be an hour’s drive away in Alexandria if Westpac closed the Ranfurly branch and there was no scheduled public transport to get there.
“Our connectivity is still not fail safe. They talk about using the internet but it is not actually an option for everybody.”
Pont said closing the branch would have flow-on effects to other businesses as the supermarket and petrol station would likely want to restrict giving cash out to customers over the weekends because they wouldn’t be able to top up quickly at the local branch on a Monday.
But economist Shamubeel Eaqub said branch closures were just the commercial reality for shrinking towns if they did not have enough business to keep banks interested.