VANISHING!
Bank and building society branches are closing all over Britain – and new figures reveal an alarming escalation on the road to oblivion
THE year is barely a month old but the withdrawal of banks from the high street has escalated to a level never witnessed before. Villages and towns up and down the country are waking up to the fact that their communities will ll no longer be served by a bank. The high street branch is vanishing, leaving people with no choice but to bank online or rely on a local post office.
Data compiled by The Mail on Sunday shows that already this year, some 423 bank and building society branches have either been axed or r put on notice of closure.
The current rate of clo- sures means that 2017 is s on course to be a record. Over the past two years, 1,046 branches have been shut by the country’s major high street banks. Although HSBC continues to shut more branches than rivals, the closure ‘bug’ has now spread to some building societies which have been reluctant to withdraw services from the communities they serve.
Last week, Yorkshire Building Society announced it would be axing 48 branches over the next 18 months as part of a major restructuring which will see the Norwich & Peterborough brand it owns disappear. It has also put 100,000 current account customers on notice that come August the society will no longer offer such a banking facility as it concentrates on its traditional savings and mortgage markets.
Once a champion of branches, the society now admits that falling usage has forced it to trim its network. It claims that last year an average seven customers a day used over the counter services at the branches it is shedding. New boss Mike Regnier insists the society remains committed to the high street, despite the impending clo- sure programme. Even after the branches shut, he says the society will have more branches per £1billion of assets (six) than Lloyds (2.5) and building societies Nationwide (3.1) and Coventry (2.5).
He adds: ‘We believe in a face-toface service. It is the way most customers prefer to deal with us. But falling usage at certain branches presents us with challenges we have to respond to. All the savings we make from this business restructuring will go back to improving the service we provide for customers.’
Meanwhile, Royal Bank of Scotland says ‘simple’ branch transactions across its RBS and NatWest networks have fallen 43 per cent since 2010. Online and mobile phone banking transactions have increased by more than 400 per cent.
The bank says branches will continue to play a ‘vital role’ for customers, providing a ‘failsafe when things go wrong and customers need a hand sorting it out’. It is also introducing mobile banking services – a bank on wheels – to some of the locations where it is axing its branch.
Similarly, HSBC says use of its branches has fallen by nearly 40 per cent over the past five years. In confirming its latest batch of closures, it says it will shut no more this year.
Only Nationwide Building Society seems committed to keeping its branch network intact. On Friday, it said: ‘We believe people of all ages like face-to-face contact with our branch teams as well as access to technology which allows customers to come into a branch and speak to an adviser via a screen-based system.’
The society is in the throes of opening a new branch in Glastonbury, Somerset, a town which is currently bankless. If this proves successful, it will consider opening in other bankless towns.
Resistance to closures is on the wane following the abandonment of the Campaign for Community Banking Services. Sponsored by charities and small business groups, it had called for new community banks which customers of all banks could use. But the initiative was thwarted by banks on competition grounds.
Jane Vass, director of policy and research at charity Age UK, says the impact of closures on elderly people should not be underestimated. She says: ‘If a branch closure happens in an area where bus services are poor, or there is patchy internet service and mobile black spots, it can make banking life extremely difficult for the elderly.’