Branch Closings Slow: Surprise News
by Robert McGarvey
Here’s the headline news from a new report via DepositAccounts.com: Branch closings slowed substantially in Q2.
According to the report: “Branch closures dropped to an estimated 376 in the second quarter of 2020, well below the per-quarter average of 631 from the second quarter of 2017 through the fourth quarter of 2019.”
Should branch skeptics such as myself, who believe many more branches need to close to rationalize financial services for a digital, contactless era, shut up and go home? As far back as 2014 I wrote in CU Times, “branches are an expensive albatross around the industry’s neck.”
Is it time for me to shut up? Nope. In fact, there is mounting evidence that every demographic, including senior citizens who hitherto have been tech holdouts but who now have embraced tech in the Covid-19 era, feel safer using tech than they do going into branches.