Bog Banking

gt94sss2

Shakin_Steve said:

Nationwide have said they will keep all of Virgin Money's stores open as well as their own branches, and extended that promise till 2028

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-13224477/Nationwide-vows-branches-strikes-deal-buy-Virgin-Money-2-9bn.html

Virgin announced that they would close about a third of their branch network last year. Those closures will continue..

JuicyJesus

TheBanker said:

For Barclays in particular, their new partnership with Tesco might prove interesting. Tesco have premises up and down the land, many of which have surplus space where cafes used to be etc. If I was Barclays I would be speaking to Tesco about using some of that space for the 'pop up' branches instead of having them in random car parks etc. Almost going back to the days when Abbey National (I think) had branches in Safeway stores. 

The thing is, it's been tried multiple times and never really gone anywhere.

HSBC opened branches in Morrisons stores, which all died a death. M&S had branches of their bank and they shut them all (and withdrew from retail banking more generally at the same time). Tesco Bank also had branches in Tesco, they got shut too.

The revealed preference of consumers is that they don't care that much about branches except for a very vocal minority, the same way that people who whinge about wanting to keep using cheques are nothing but a very vocal minority. You can make the branches as convenient as you like, but people don't want to use them because virtually anything is going to be more convenient than having to go to a specific physical location to do something.

GeoffTF

TheBanker said:

I noticed a mobile Barclays in the car park of my local garden centre the other day.

That is cheating. The "This is Money" article said that Conservative MP Anne Marie Morris was quoted as saying that the banking hubs policy was ‘fundamentally flawed’, adding: ‘The sorts of places which are being established, because you can’t find sites which suit, we have one hub in a public lavatory.'  Setting up a hub in the yard outside a public lavatory does not count. It has to be inside to count.

Nasqueron

ColdIron said:

Shakin_Steve said:

"Less and less people are using branches and more and more using online services"

Fewer!

Only if you follow the personal opinion of Robert Baker who decided, in 1770, that to him, fewer sounded better for countable nouns and he happened to be rich and influential enough to publish a book* to push this idea so it became a "rule".

Baker wrote, in point XLVII, that in his opinion

This Word is most commonly used in speaking of a Number; where I should think Fewer would do better. No fewer than a Hundred appears to me not only more elegant than No less than a Hundred, but more strictly proper.

Less had been used for countable nouns for centuries before that, indeed, less and few, from Germanic roots, were recorded in Old English in the 700s/800s but fewer did not first appear around 1340 according to the OED. 

Less originally was a comparative form of little, meaning smaller, indeed, OED has references back to 888 where less is taken to mean fewer i.e. a smaller number of things. No less than Alfred the Great wrote

Swa mid læs worda swa mid ma, swæðer we hit yereccan mayon.

("With less words or with more, whether we may prove it.")

Even ignoring the many versions of the rule e.g. for time - do we say "Usain Bolt can run the 100m in fewer than 10 seconds" or "we are going on holiday in fewer than 3 weeks"?, it comes down to the fact that fewer rather than less was simply a bloke's opinion that stuck. Thankfully we have less grammar pedants around now to argue this

*Reflections on the English Language in the Nature of Vaugelas’s Remarks on the French; Being a Detection of many improper Expressions used in Conversation, and of many others to be found in Authors. To which is prefixed a Discourse Addressed to His majesty. Yes that genuinely is the title!

ColdIron

Nasqueron said:

ColdIron said:

Shakin_Steve said:

"Less and less people are using branches and more and more using online services"

Fewer!

Thankfully we have less grammar pedants around now to argue this

Still fewer!

"Usain Bolt can run the 100m in fewer than 10 seconds" or "we are going on holiday in fewer than 3 weeks"

Fewer for things that are countable. The issue here is that by quantifying the units with a number they are now countED and become a single entity rather than individual components, so fewer is wrong and less is correct

TheBanker

GeoffTF said:

TheBanker said:

I noticed a mobile Barclays in the car park of my local garden centre the other day.

That is cheating. The "This is Money" article said that Conservative MP Anne Marie Morris was quoted as saying that the banking hubs policy was ‘fundamentally flawed’, adding: ‘The sorts of places which are being established, because you can’t find sites which suit, we have one hub in a public lavatory.'  Setting up a hub in the yard outside a public lavatory does not count. It has to be inside to count.

Yes, maybe Barclays could have saved more money. Instead of paying for a van (it looked like a modified camper van), they could have just asked the garden centre if they could set up in the corner of the gents! 

Nasqueron

ColdIron said:

Nasqueron said:

ColdIron said:

Shakin_Steve said:

"Less and less people are using branches and more and more using online services"

Fewer!

Thankfully we have less grammar pedants around now to argue this

Still fewer!

"Usain Bolt can run the 100m in fewer than 10 seconds" or "we are going on holiday in fewer than 3 weeks"

Fewer for things that are countable. The issue here is that by quantifying the units with a number they are now countED and become a single entity rather than individual components, so fewer is wrong and less is correct

Oh for sure, but again, it's not a rule, it's not a correction, it's just the opinion of some old dude that stuck around

TheBanker

JuicyJesus said:

TheBanker said:

For Barclays in particular, their new partnership with Tesco might prove interesting. Tesco have premises up and down the land, many of which have surplus space where cafes used to be etc. If I was Barclays I would be speaking to Tesco about using some of that space for the 'pop up' branches instead of having them in random car parks etc. Almost going back to the days when Abbey National (I think) had branches in Safeway stores. 

The thing is, it's been tried multiple times and never really gone anywhere.

HSBC opened branches in Morrisons stores, which all died a death. M&S had branches of their bank and they shut them all (and withdrew from retail banking more generally at the same time). Tesco Bank also had branches in Tesco, they got shut too.

The revealed preference of consumers is that they don't care that much about branches except for a very vocal minority, the same way that people who whinge about wanting to keep using cheques are nothing but a very vocal minority. You can make the branches as convenient as you like, but people don't want to use them because virtually anything is going to be more convenient than having to go to a specific physical location to do something.

I agree with everything you've written. 20 years ago, the high street banks were worried that the supermarket banks were going to take all their business. Yet none of these supermarket banks have been very sucessul really. Tesco and Sainsburys are both effectively selling up, and there's not much left of M&S. 

I said on one of the other threads, I worked in bank branches quite a few years ago and spent a couple of months as interim manager of a branch that was closing. I say interim manager which is a grand title - I managed one cashier. We served a handfull of customers every day. The cashier, who'd worked there for years and decided to retire had been gently encouraging the regulars to try using the Post Office instead. She said they should try it before our branch closed, then if they had any problems they could let us know and we could help them sort it out. None of them had any problems, and there were days towards the end when we served zero customers. 

As well as 'managing' this branch, I had a second job dealing with some general admin work that was sent to me from other branches in the area. I was grateful for this because otherwise I would have gone out of my mind with boredom. There were afternoons when the cashier and I resorted to playing 'I spy' to keep ourselves sane, given that we'd already done the admin work, cleaned the counter, read the paper, done all the admin, re-organised the cupboards, watered the plants... 

When the closure was announced, some noisy locals organised a protest. The cashier told me she didn't recognise any of these people as ever having used the branch. The reality is that if even half of the protestors had used the branch occasionally, it probably wouldn't have been closing.

If customers really required branches, they would all be moving their accounts to Nationwide. The truth is most of them don't, and aren't.

km1500

I would also add that if customers want branches they should prepare to pay for their current accounts

TheBanker

km1500 said:

I would also add that if customers want branches they should prepare to pay for their current accounts

I agree with this. For savings accounts, they do pay for branch access in a way, because accounts available through branches generally pay lower interest rates than online only accounts. 

The problem is, not enough customers would pay, so the branches would still be closing down. 

Personally, I am slightly more concerned about the loss of free to use ATMs than bank branches. There is still a need for cash, all be it reduced. The small market town where I live had three high street banks when I moved here six years ago. Each bank had two ATMs, and the Co-op shop had an ATM so we had seven to choose from. Now there's just the Co-op left, so if it breaks down we have to either travel to get hold of cash, or use the Post Office (which is no good if it's evening or after lunch time on a Saturday).