Two Notts towns hit by HSBC branch closures
DECISION COMES AS BANK SAYS 97.5% OF TRANSACTIONS ARE NOW ONLINE
ARNOLD high street has been dealt a blow after HSBC announced its branch in the town was one of 114 across the country to close.
The bank in Front Street will shut in May next year.
Locally elsewhere the Long Eaton bank in the Market Place will close in July, HSBC said. Officials said the closures were due to fewer people using the physical branches to use services. The number of people visiting HSBC banks has fallen by 65% in five years, the firm said, as reported by the Mirror Online.
In a statement, HSBC said: “The decline in branch use has accelerated so much since the Covid-19 pandemic that some of the branches closing are now serving fewer than 250 customers a week.”
Brits are banking more online instead – though in many areas bank branch closures make this unavoidable and not a choice.
HSBC said 97.5 per cent of all its banking transactions now take place online. HSBC UK managing director of UK distribution Jackie Uhi said: “People are changing the way they bank and footfall in many branches is at an all-time low, with no signs of it returning.
“The decision to close a branch is never easy or taken lightly, especially if we are the last branch in an area, so we’ve invested heavily in our ‘post closure’ strategy, including providing free tablet devices to selected branch customers who do not already have a device to bank digitally, alongside one-to-one coaching to help them migrate to digital banking.”
The bank in Arnold temporarily closed in September last year as it turned into a “digital service” branch. The move was to remove counters and install new self-service machines for cash and cheque transactions.
News of the closure comes at a time of significant wider investment into Arnold town centre with the new AMP building, the centrepiece of the multi-million-pound Arnold Market regeneration, having opened and welcomed a number of new businesses which have moved in.
People are changing the way they bank and footfall in many branches is at an all-time low.
Jackie Uhi, HSBC Bank