There are few communities across Scotland that have been unaffected by the closure of a High Street bank or building society in recent years.
In fact, research by consumer group Which? suggested as many as one third of branches shut their doors between 2010 and 2018.
That amounts to 610 in total – in addition to 200 ATM machines that have also disappeared.
For some in our larger urban areas, this may be brushed aside as a sign of the times. More and more people are banking online and rarely carry cash around with them.
However, in more rural areas like my constituency of Moray, it is a different story altogether.
Many homes still don’t have access to superfast broadband, which can make online banking difficult, while local businesses still need somewhere to deposit cash as the end of the day or week.
In many places, people are finding that there may not be a bank left at all.
Read more
In fact, research by consumer group Which? suggested as many as one third of branches shut their doors between 2010 and 2018.
That amounts to 610 in total – in addition to 200 ATM machines that have also disappeared.
For some in our larger urban areas, this may be brushed aside as a sign of the times. More and more people are banking online and rarely carry cash around with them.
However, in more rural areas like my constituency of Moray, it is a different story altogether.
Many homes still don’t have access to superfast broadband, which can make online banking difficult, while local businesses still need somewhere to deposit cash as the end of the day or week.
In many places, people are finding that there may not be a bank left at all.
Read more
"A cashless food economy is not all good" by Sylvain Charlebois, senior director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University in Halifax.
