clicky


I think most of the top high street banks will love to be able to sell of those branches. Its what they have been wanting to do for ages and of course a branch closes then the jobs associated with it will have to go. It will be a win win for the banks, sorry we have to sell this branch of becuase they are forcing us and your losing your job because we have to sell the branch.

Yep. Sell of the small non profitable branches that small comunities rely on and create new banks using them that can only ever lose money. Genius idea from the loony left.

My bank doesn't have any branches and it doesn't bother me - I use telephone and internet banking. They just need to make sure there are plenty of cash points / paying in facilities available.

+1. Most of the money moves in and out of everyone's account electronically these days anyway. The days of having to go into your bank once a week are long since past. The reason bank branches are unprofitable is that day to day the footfall through them has dropped off immensely. Sad as I am about people losing their jobs - and I generally find the people manning the desks are helpful and care about their customers, unlike apparently most of the people higher up the chain - I can't help thinking that it's just a job a lot of people don't need anyone to do for them any more.

Jon

In retail banking, the number of branches in an area correlates very closely to market share there. Even if people hardly ever set foot in the branch itself, they instinctively trust the bank they see most often.

So in a sense it is quite reasonable to want banks to sell branches off to competitors (if you want to increase competition). Sure they like to close branches and turn them into other shops, but they desperately don't want to sell off sites to another bank.

The same problem does suggest though that people are not very interested in competition between high street banks, so the public good that the idea is designed to achieve is unlikely to be obvious. New contenders in the market may not even want stuffy old bank premises - they need to get people in the door, which means tempting them in with something flashy. We should probably make Starbucks, Pret and Nero surrender some of their absurdly abundant retail spaces instead.

There's plenty of competition anyway. Dozens of banks and building societies to choose from.

Yeah, but there's no real competition, just lots of choice. None of them offer anything particularly unique.

Realistically, how do you think trust ratings for banks have been going recently?


Making more banks that are pretty much like the other banks that are already there to me seems to not at all get round basic customer inertia. Every consumer watchdog says the same thing - people don't change banks as often as they should. Increasing the number of essentially similar candidates in a choice people seem entirely reluctant to make anyway seems to be rather a waste of time to me. It would seem more useful to give people a choice of different forms of institution, rather than merely 'more of the same'. More credit unions or building societies to compete in the public space with the big name banks. I think people might see that as a choice that's actually worth making but the latter simply aren't on the radar for most people as an available choice.

Jon

If you want to add excitement and passion to the industry, legislate to allow brothels and crack dealers to open banking subsidiaries.

If the idea is to do something a bit dull but worthy; such as breaking the stranglehold that a small number of retail banks hold over the domestic market courtesy of their omnipresent branch systems, then taking branches from them is probably an effective method.



I am talking about trusting the bank to do basic bank stuff like accept money on your behalf from your employer and allow you to pay bills and get the cash out a machine and stuff.
Realistically, have you stopped trusting your bank to do that?

if your a customer of RBS, natwest or ulster bank then probably yes

Yes, which is why I've just switched away from a bank that has an investment arm to one that doesn't (a building society actually). I appreciate all financial institutions invest their depositor's money but I've moved to one that has a record of doing so prudently, rather than buggering about and having to be bailed out either by our government or the government (in the loosest sense of the term) of Dubai.

I don't fancy waiting until 2018 to be sure some eejit isn't going to do a Nick Leeson with my money and it seems right now there are plenty of eejits in the square mile.

Jon

I don't agree. High street presence is the least of things any one uses a bank for these days.

Make all post offices have to accept deposits for all banks, then you have a reason to keep the post offices going and no need to feel that you have to be with a particular bank on the odd occasion someone writes you a cheque.

I bank with the worst of the worst, so much so that last time I went in to my branch, the woman I was talking to couldn't believe the experience i'd had and she was the branch manager. She was actually quite shocked at how little her protestations we're taken on board by the call centre she was talking to. In the end, she had to pass the phone back to me as they wouldn't talk to her anymore. And she was a branch manager.

Localisation means squat these days, so just give me a good bank.

You have totally missed my point. I said up front that nobody has to use the branches for them to be profitable
http://www.economist.com/node/21554746


It's the ubiquity of reassuring bricks and mortar store fronts that sells a bank, not so much anything that happens inside the places.

Goes to show what twats most people are then. To be fair, I missed the bit where you said this has been studied and that the numbers fly in the face of all logical thinking. That doesn't mean there might not be some sort of realisation that some new thinking might be better for society. Perhaps the current backlash is the start of societal evolution.