High street bank branches are ‘thriving', Nationwide says
The building society has pledged to keep all of its nearly 700 branches open until at least the start of 2028.
New data from the group revealed that nearly 200,000 more customers used its branches in the financial year to the end of March, compared with the prior year.
It comes a day before Nationwide is set to unveil its full-year financial results.
Muir Mathieson, Nationwide's chief financial officer, told the PA news agency: 'The branches are thriving.
'We're seeing the number of people going into branches going up, and we think part of that (increase) is that there are fewer branches on the high street now that our competitors have closed theirs.'
Nationwide has the second-largest branch network in the UK, behind Lloyds Banking Group.
But Lloyds has been making sweeping cuts to its network – with the most recently-announced closures to 136 branches taking place over the next year.
Others have been drastically trimming their network, such as Santander announcing in March it would be closing more than a fifth of its high street branches, bringing it down to 349 across Britain.
The banks say they are adapting to meet the behaviours of their customers, who increasingly want to do banking on their phones or online and are decreasingly using their high street sites.
But Nationwide suggested that UK consumers have been switching their bank to Nationwide so that they can make use of in-person services.
Customers want face-to-face contact particularly if they have concerns about fraud, or if they want reassurance about a specific process or account, Mr Mathieson said.
'Interestingly, we get larger Isa balances when people open them in a branch than when they do it online,' he told PA, indicating that people feel more comfortable handling bigger sums of money in a branch.
About 40% of Isas were opened in branches last year, and more than 30% of new current accounts, according to data from the building society.
About 5.7 million customers visited a branch at least once during the year.
Nationwide's branch promise extended to Virgin Money after buying the rival bank for £2.8 billion last year in the biggest banking deal since the financial crisis.
When it bought the lender, it paused Virgin's plans to close some of its branches and brought it into the group's branch promise.
It has also been working to improve the bank's customer service systems since merging, after chief executive Debbie Crosbie said there were 'challenges' to overcome.
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