Banks operating across England have picked up a new trend of closing their branches in rural areas and forcing customers to go online. Financial market analysts say that the move was chosen in a bid to cut down the CapEx and OpEx costs and bring the banking services close to the fingertips of their respective customers.
But is this move really helping the populace of Britain- especially the senior citizens?
No, says the populace of UK.
Already hard-working families are unable to cope with the repercussions of pay freezes, lower interest rates, and lending drought.
And by obsessively closing branches, and pushing the customers towards online services, especially in rural areas where pensioners rely a lot on them, banks are seen making things worse to their patrons.
In the past decade, the stats speak that the big four banks- Lloyds, RBS Natwest, HSBC, and Barclays have shut more than 4 in 10 of their branches and have decided to invest millions into promoting their website and banking apps.
But when the customer’s perspective is taken into account, such branch closures are doing more harm than good. This is due to the fact that online banking is exposing them to more online frauds.
According to an estimate, 43,875 people almost lost £2,784 pounds on an average to sophisticated new scams last year. And in some cases, victims lost more than £100,000- especially the senior citizens.
While banks blame their customers for showing laxity in following basic cybersecurity rules, the populaces of Briton screech otherwise.
Tracey Best, a 42-year-old mother of three from Woodbridge, Suffolk, shares her experience through our platform. She is said to be a customer of Barclay since 2008 and as a real estate broker, she saves her earnings in the said bank.
For some reason, Ms. Best chose to move to a rural part of England in 2015 and transferred her account to one of Barclay’s branches in the vicinity of her new home.
Unfortunately, within a year, the bank chose to close the branch operating in the rural area and pushed Tracey to use their banking services. It is said that the lady lost over £13,000 to fraudsters in just one year in 2016-17- all due to the use of online banking services.
When the bank was confronted, it just chose to lay back its hands as the fraud took place between the customer and the hacker, and the banking platform chose to play the ‘blame game’.
Therefore, the above instance proves that the branch closures of banks are forcing their respective customers to use online services which are leaving them vulnerable to online fraudsters.
What’s your say on this….?
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