Santander to shut 140 Branches

General Chat
1

This quote stuck out like a sore thumb…

He warned that even though the use of online banking is on the rise, a third of the country still does not bank online.

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2

A third? That’s higher than I would’ve thought :confused:

I wonder what the reasons are for that?

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3

From my experience, it’s because people essentially never need to do anything with their account other than pay for things using their card and withdraw cash. So the trip to the branch once or twice a year is no bother

Seems to be the same for people my age (early 20s) and my parent’s age (50s-60s).

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Even with this 2/3 of the customer base is not using a branch. This has consequences. People really need to get on board with this fact quick or they will be in for a nasty shock!

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https://www.createanet.co.uk/blog/the-move-to-digital-only-banking/

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I think the traditional banks will have to start consolidating into shared branches if they’re to continue having a presence in smaller towns and villages. It doesn’t make sense (economically) to have a separate barclays, santander, hsbc, natwest etc in every town - at least it doesn’t seem so given the rate they are shutting down

If the industry moved towards a model of a single, shared branch where you could transact with any of the high street banks in one building (kind of like post office do) they would at least stand a much better chance of serving these customers that are getting let down by closures

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I totally agree with this and have hoped/wished/expected this for years. For some ‘bank specific/high level’ things such as mortgages/loans etc, you could just have telephones in the ‘Shared bank’ (as Alliance and Leicester used to have for Girobank customers bank in the day - it was practically a ‘taxi phone’ - pick it up, press the single button and there you go) - but for cash handling/cheques, easy enough to share a physical location…

But I guess it’s the same as parcel companies - they want to ‘keep out’ the competition and keep their customers ‘unaware’ of the opposition so they don’t want shared facilities (yep, if you Hermes won’t allow you to offer services from their opposition - Evri | Cheap Parcel Delivery & Courier Service - and I believe others are the same: even though most places are just ‘drop off’ points and you don’t actually buy from them).