Bank branch closures hit the elderly hardest
HUNDREDS of thousands of residents are being forced into online banking as 46% of branch offices have shut down in Spain since 2008 – with Alicante and Castellón provinces at the top of the closure list.
A report by Madridbased consultancy company Tatum found that 20,234 local offices have been terminated.
They noted that the country’s main banks – including BBVA, CaixaBank, Bankia and Sabadell – are expected to close another 800 branches before the end of the year.
The trend has meant that half of the municipalities in Spain – some 4,000 – no longer have a bank.
People living in rural and semirural areas have been hardest hit by the closures.
Tatum’s report shows that Alicante, Almería, Barcelona, Castellón, Gerona, Lérida, Madrid, Orense, Palencia, Tarragona and Zaragoza are the provinces which have suffered the largest number of closures.
Across the country, a total of 86,255 bank employees have lost their jobs in the last 11 years.
Tatum noted that banks have resorted to ‘ new technologies’ to plug the gap.
The financial institutions have stated that the new services for their clients give them more autonomy and access to ‘ immediate’ banking in the home, as well as on their mobile phones.
The British charity Age UK highlighted how closures have a greater effect on elderly people than the rest of the population.
They stated that high numbers of elderly people do not use the internet – sometimes because a lack of computer skills puts them off, while others have concerns about security amid frequent reports of scams.
The charity noted that ‘ a minority of older people use internet banking’ but most have a strong preference for inbranch banking, preferring facetoface service, the chance to talk to people, and the security of seeing their bank transaction take place and receiving a paper record to prove it.
Faced with the decline of traditional banking and the rise of online services, the charity has called for ‘ more consideration of the needs of older customers’.