Daily Mail

Moral outrage that penalises elderly and the vulnerable

- By Alex Brummer CITY EDITOR

JUST a couple of years ago, there were three thriving bank branches on my local high street in southwest London, each with cash machines outside.

Two have been displaced by coffee shops and the third seems set to become a physiother­apist’s clinic.

Now the only way to access financial services near my home is at a stuffy and overcrowde­d branch of the Post Office.

Of course, my neighbourh­ood is now typical of many others. As the Mail reveals today, Britain’s biggest and most profitable financial institutio­ns have for years been conducting nothing less than an assault on branch banking.

It is a moral outrage that penalises vulnerable and elderly customers particular­ly, while exposing small businesses and sole traders, many of which still use cash, to unnecessar­ily long journeys and an enhanced risk of being mugged.

The banks claim that most customers can do their banking online. This is grossly simplistic. Online fraud is surging, putting countless people off internet banking.

And poor broadband and intermitte­nt 5G coverage across much of the country means that many customers are unable to log on reliably. One only has to see the queues outside those branches still open from the Brecon Beacons in Wales to central London to recognise that demand for across- the- counter banking services is still very much alive.

As the Mail’s review of bankbranch closures shows, the worst offender is HSBC, which for years advertised itself as the world’s ‘local bank’ and plastered its name all over Heathrow airport.

Yet it is not very ‘local’ nowadays. HSBC has cut its branch network across Britain from 1,070 to just 370 – a whopping 69 per cent.

The promise by the Big Four banks, HSBC, NatWest, Barclays and Lloyds never to close the last branch in town is starting to look like a chimera.

What is particular­ly aggravatin­g is that all the UK banks – especially Lloyds and NatWest – benefited from the taxpayer to the tune of billions in bailouts when the financial system came close to collapse in 2008.

Customers are now being repaid with calamitous services, clunky IT systems and feeble returns on their savings and deposits at a time of rising interest rates, inflation and cost of living.

And when high streets are suffering from high business rates, the aftermath of Covid-19 and surging energy prices, the closure of Britain’s bank branches adds to the hollowing- out of town centres.

The switch from branch banking has gone too far – and is becoming a source of enormous regret and frustratio­n for millions of customers.

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