Bank branches: are we ready to say goodbye?

There’s beginning to be an assumption that those who don’t trust or adopt electronic banking and payments are the elderly and those who are unable to keep up with change in the digital world. This is something of an insult to those who fully understand the methodology and mechanics of card/phone payment and computer banking but choose not to use it. It is argued that times are changing and we must change with them. The fraudsters certainly are! This reliance on digital technology also relies on a perfect digital network that never fails, can’t be hacked and is invulnerable to rogue states and malefactors. It is an impersonal world where transactions and payments and finance in general is done on a “computer” screen or with tap card or phone swipe. Thus the importance of phone batteries, internet speed and access to the right app at the right time become the financial masters and the humble coin and note cease to exist. I wonder at the social consequence of this state. A non working card, a flat phone battery, some electronic being deciding to bock a payment or a card and no one available to sort it out. No mechanism to instantly replace a lost or stolen card or unblock an account that has been frozen until the computer has got round to dealing with it and no one answering the phones. Charities and small clubs and societies being charged for their new electronic apparatus and accounts.
Perhaps all this is inevitable, but I wonder who ultimately benefits. Will life be any quicker or smoother and will our spending and saving habits change for the better or make it easier to spend carelessly? I suppose I would regret the change because I have lived in a human world until now. Ask in ten years and, maybe, I’ll just shrug a shoulder and tap my card without thinking about it. I hope not.

Ps. Everyone will know what you’ve spent, where you’ve been and what to target you with to get you to part with more money -oops sorry – card payments.

Barclays is still investing in my local branch. They sent me an SMS last week to tell me that my local branch will be close for improvements from 12th July to 12th August 2019. My local branch is head office in Canary Wharf, so it’s hardly surprising.

But I very rarely visit any bank branch. It’s just unnecessary. Everything can be done more quickly and conveniently online.

I am not aware of any bank closures in our town in recent years. There are four in the marketplace and two close by. I’m still registered with the university branch of my bank near where I used to live, but if that closes I will switch to the larger one in town.

For years, my main reason for going to my bank has been to deposit cheques. I usually just put them in an envelope with paying-in slips and drop them in the letterbox when passing. I visit another bank to deposit cheques for a charity. At one of the banks there is someone stationed at the entrance to open the door and greet visitors, which seems a bit pointless.

We are well supplied with free-to-use ATMs, with 12 sites within a quarter of a mile of the marketplace.

For years we had an HSBC bank on the university campus where I worked. It provided banking services for all the main banks. That was a condition imposed by the university. If our regulator had insisted that banks worked together and shared services, it might have been economically viable to have retained some of the banks that have closed.

We have lost high street shops because many people have changed to buying online. We’ve lost many local food shops to major supermarkets and have to travel to get to those.Why do we think that, with the huge take up of online services, bank branches should not be affected? New banks will spring up that are online only and, if we paid the real costs of our accounts, banks with many underused branches would become uncompetitive.

Somewhere we have to recognise the effects of change, of altered customer habits, and work towards a solution that helps all as far as possible – but it won’t be everything we have now, nor restoring what has gone. A positive change might be to have some means to represent all banks, or the major ones, in a single local office that would give help and advice to all customers, to meet the needs of those who want face-to-face contact. Routine transactions such as depositing funds, withdrawing money, can be dealt with in other ways, a number of which already exist.