Yet More UK Bank Closures — The Wider Issues

Last month, the Express published a list of 41 branches of Barclays Bank that it said would be closing between then and August. In fact, a number of branches had already been closed by the time it ran the story. One branch not on that list was the Beckenham Branch; this week, customers of that branch received a letter which said it would be closing for good at noon on June 14.

This branch is a short bus ride or a long walk from Penge, which did have its own branch; those premises are now occupied by a bookmaker. As reported here recently, Penge is very likely going to lose its major shopping centre soon too, including a branch of Iceland. 

Bank closures are nothing new, of course. At one time there were five major banks known domestically as “The Big Five”.  Now there are only four, National Westminster having been absorbed by the Royal Bank of Scotland. There were also many building societies; most of those are now gone. Abbey National was founded as a building society in 1944 from a merger of two existing building societies. It launched  an on-line bank in 2000 when on-line banking was still in its infancy, then absorbed Bradford & Bingley (formerly also a building society). In 2010, Abbey National became the UK arm of  Santander, a massive Spanish banking group.

For several years, local branches of Santander continued to operate, but in this area alone, the Forest Hill, Sydenham and Penge branches closed. Whether or not there is some insidious ideology behind it, these closures – not only in Britain – are shifting us more and more on-line. For people who live in large cities, this is currently not much of a problem; it may take a little longer to reach your nearest bank, and the queue at the counter may also be longer, but for people who live in rural areas, this isn’t so good. Rural in the UK may mean a 15 or 20 mile drive; in the United States, Canada or India, it may mean a lot more.

Most people who use on-line banking do so from their mobiles, which increases the likelihood of hacking by one means or another. What though of those with no access to on-line banking? Even many of the homeless appear to have some sort of access. Charities have long been handing out basic mobile phones to them, and will doubtless eventually hand out smartphones, but unless we want to move everything entirely on-line, including most of our local shops, we, or somebody, is going to have to drastically rethink this apparently inevitable migration.