Halifax and Lloyds Bank to close 48 branches across the UK – full list of closures | Personal Finance | Finance
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Lloyds Bank will be closing 48 branches which includes seven Halifax outlets. Lloyds said the closures are the result of changing customer habits, with 18 million of its 25 million customers preferring to bank online.
These closures follow a trend of adaptations as retail banks struggle to keep physical branches open. In late September, Virgin Money announced it would also close 31 branches across Scotland and the North of England.
Fergus Murphy, Group Customer Experience Director at Virgin Money, said at the time: “As our customers change the way they want to bank with us and conduct fewer transactions in-store, we must continue to evolve the role of our stores into places where we showcase our products and bring our digital services to life.”
Virgin Money explained it needed to adapt to “changing consumer demand” as physical banking becomes more rare. The bank said the number of customers using bank branches for day-to-day transactions has been “on a downward trajectory across the UK banking industry for a number of years, and this has been further accelerated by the pandemic”.
The Virgin Money branches will also close in early 2022. Hundreds were expected to be made redundant from these closures but Virgin Money assured its intention was to “find alternative roles for colleagues wherever possible, either within other stores locally or elsewhere in the Group”.
Gareth Shaw, Which? Head of Money, issued a warning on how branch closures could impact savers in light of the Virgin Money news.
“It is vital that consumers who are not yet ready or able to bank digitally are protected against the domino effect of branch closures that have taken place across the UK, particularly if they are vulnerable,” he said.
“This announcement from Virgin Money also demonstrates the risk of the Government delaying its desperately-needed legislation to protect cash and the industry’s failure to come up with solutions to the rapid decline of cash access.
“This should serve as a wake up call to the government. Legislation safeguarding access to cash must be introduced as soon as possible, which gives the FCA powers to hold industry accountable for providing local cash services.”
Despite these warnings, additional research from NerdWallet showed many consumers may not be phased by a lack of physical banking options. In August, the company produced a study which sought to reveal people’s attitudes towards digital banking in light of over 300 branches being set to close their doors in 2021.
With more than 300 UK branch closures in total already confirmed by Santander, Lloyds, Halifax, HSBC, NatWest, and Barclays in 2021, the research from NerdWallet found three in five (60 percent) Brits would now consider a bank with no physical branches.
NerdWallet said this may suggest the UK is at a “tipping point”, with 40 percent of respondents claiming they were prepared to have a digital-only bank as their one and only provider, while an additional 23 percent said they would want both a digital and conventional bank with branches.
The same research showed more than one in four (28 percent) were influenced to select a bank because of convenient access to a branch, over a third (38 percent) claimed they selected a bank based on convenient access online and almost a quarter (24 percent) were influenced by the convenience offered through the bank’s app.
Denise Ko Genovese, a Senior Personal Finance Expert at NerdWallet, commented: “The shift to digital banking is very apparent and this trend is undeniably a contributing factor in bank branch closures. There is also an expectation as everything becomes more digital, for banks and other service providers to evolve to meet the modern needs of the public as well: 24 hour and remote access, immediate transactions, and ongoing budget tracking are just a few benefits online banking provides.
“But we are in a time of transition and there is clearly still a role for physical branches on the banking landscape.”
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