DUNCAN BARKES: Hold your eyes peeled within the coming weeks – and prepare them on a few of our greatest banks.
Duncan argues pensioners and susceptible individuals might be disproportionally affected by closures (Picture: Getty Photos)
Banking bosses on this nation appear to have utter contempt for his or her prospects. The announcement by Lloyds Banking Group that it plans to shut an additional 95 branches throughout the UK this yr is not only one other blow to the way forward for the excessive avenue but additionally exhibits that loyalty and customer support counts for nothing lately. This newest spherical of closures will impression prospects of Lloyds Financial institution, Halifax and Financial institution of Scotland. Individuals hit by these closures will really feel uncared for and nugatory.
Lloyds Financial institution branches are set to close in quite a lot of locations together with Birkenhead, Bournemouth, Crowborough, Hinkley, Honiton, Lancaster, Newmarket, Redhill, Tewkesbury and Uttoxeter. Birmingham is especially badly hit with 4 closures alone scheduled for June.
Elsewhere within the banking group, Halifax branches might be closed in areas resembling Ashton-under-Lyne, Bognor Regis, Chichester, Didsbury, Ellesmere Port, Halesowen, Skelmersdale, Sutton Coldfield and Torquay. Financial institution of Scotland branches might be axed in Blairgowrie, Kelso and Stonehaven, amongst different spots throughout the nation.
This newest announcement is, sadly, nothing new and follows the choice by NatWest to additionally prune its community of branches with closures due in Brentwood, Pontefract, Sheffield, South Shields and Welwyn Backyard Metropolis together with different areas.
Speak to any native MP or their workplace employees and they’ll let you know that when these bulletins are made, their inbox is filled with correspondence from involved prospects outlining their anger at such choices and interesting to their MP to try to cease the closures.
Some MPs efficiently problem a financial institution closure however largely channel their efforts into creating a neighborhood banking hub which offers in-person banking providers for a number of banks in communities the place conventional branches have closed.
And whereas that is laudable and positively goes partly in direction of mitigating the impression of the closures, it does not likely deal with how financial institution bosses appear all too eager to shutdown branches on a whim with out correct consideration for his or her prospects or session with them.
In response to any criticism of those choices, you may all the time assure {that a} financial institution group will bang on about their providers being obtainable to anybody anyplace through on-line banking or their “main apps and 24/7 messaging service” as one assertion asserting the closures put it.
What full guff. This utterly disregards the emotions individuals have about going surfing and doing their banking enterprise. Not everyone seems to be assured or able to utilizing on-line providers and nor ought to they be pressured into it after many years of being a loyal buyer to a banking model.
Charities and organisations resembling Silver Voices, Digital Poverty Alliance and the Nationwide Pensioners Conference have all rightly raised considerations through the years that straightforward telling individuals to go surfing is just not so simple as is usually recommended. Older and susceptible persons are extra prone to turn out to be prey to scammers who’re solely too eager to take advantage of uncertainty, nervousness and inexperience within the on-line world.
And as we hear about one other spherical of financial institution closures that but once more slashes buyer selection, it’s in opposition to a backdrop of financial institution bosses who’re personally coining it in.
Final month it was reported that Charlie Nunn, chief govt of Lloyds Banking Group, might be in line for a most annual pay packet value greater than £10million as banking bosses profit from a call to scrap a cap on banker bonuses.
I personally haven’t any situation with anybody getting as a lot as they’ll via pay and perks for the job they do, however it isn’t proper when their choice making impacts on their prospects in such a brutal method.
The top of this month will see the annual reviews printed for NatWest, HSBC and Barclays and it is going to be fascinating to see how properly their bosses are rewarded whereas branches proceed to be closed throughout the UK.
After all, banks are underneath strain to make financial savings wherever potential, however it has by no means been so stark that the pendulum has swung too far within the improper route and prospects are shedding out.
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These banking bosses ought to think about how their mother and father or grandparents would cope with out accessing a neighborhood department or being pressured to go surfing the subsequent time they make choices about closures.
It would properly focus their minds in a distinct and fairer route.
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