Lack of Banks and Building Society branches in Forest Hill

Does anyone understand why we don’t have a single bank or building society or credit union in Forest Hill. Often High Street financial institutions are found near stations and estate agents. We have a very busy station and nine estate agents.

The Post Office is closing all its current accounts on 11th September, although I have learned today that they have a service called Everyday Banking which does mean you can make a deposit there if your bank is a participant in the scheme. I’m not sure if there are charges.

I understand that there is a move to cashless and online transactions, but why is it that when you find one bank, you find six nearby? For example Beckenham has a branch of all main banks and building societies, whereas we have not a single one.

Barclays?

If you refer to the Barclays branch on the corner of Dartmouth Rd and London Rd, it has closed.

Blimey, checked on Barclays own website which shows it open. Someone had best let them know

Santander’s excuse for closing was the lack of footfall especially to use the counters, so I suppose Barclays found the same. The problem is as you say once one bank etc closes they all close! Santander showed me a map siting the nearest branches either in Sydenham or Beckenham!! I would have to get 2 buses to Beckenham! I live between Honor Oak & Crofton Park, so go to Catford (unless shopping in Lewisham or Bromley). It is total madness! The nearest Nationwide FOR ME is Bromley.

The Sydenham branch of Santander has also closed.

Out of interest, what services are you after from the banks?

Banks are moving to the automation model - even if you find a bank you’ll be greeted with a row of machines and 1 assistant…the desks are usually reserved for business accounts…it ain’t the future it’s the now Banks dont feel the need to invest in brick & mortar or multiple salaries of 18k+ a year…

There is a limit to the amount of cash that can be drawn out of ATMs. Amounts of more than around £250 or £300 need to be withdrawn from a branch. That is the situation at Santander,; with other banks such as the Co-operative Bank, the situation is different.

Again with Santanded, it is my understanding that certain international transfers, depending on in which country destination bank is situate, require to be done in branch

For our convenience our local bank shut. Our closest is now 17 miles away. There are no busses. It’s not that bad in FH!

Most services are adequate without a branch, but depositing cash or cheque is the thing that can’t be done.

I’ve never used it myself, but I believe you can scan cheques in via apps on your phone now with some banks - I know some friends who has a small business do it this way.

Cash is more difficult of course.

And how often does anyone need to withdraw more than £300 in cash? Once a year perhaps? So a bank is going to pay £000s for your annual visit for a load of cash? Come on… I think a few on here may find a Revolut or Monzo card quite useful. Time to move with the times. Cash will be gone in five years. Good riddance.

I broadly agree with your point, but my Monzo account hasn’t been great for large payments that go beyond the daily/monthly limits. There’s a 1+hr wait for support via the app at the moment, so that’s not helpful if you need to execute an unusual transaction quickly.

Temporary growing pains for the challenger banks, perhaps, but “legacy banks” saved the day for me when I needed to buy my last car.

Actually, people with businesses who deal (perfectly legitimately) in cash need to withdraw large sums several times a week.

I think I found the answer: Hotelling’s Model of spatial competition:

I think we will see more and more businesses switching to cash-free as time goes on. Cash on premises is becoming an unnecessary risk for many, or at the very least a burden when you have to drive miles to deposit it each day. As you can probably guess, I much prefer cards and have been carrying the same emergency £20 in my wallet for months now. I only feel a need to use cash when outside of London, there is little need for it locally - and I welcome that.

I use Revolut and it has been trouble free so far and saved me a small fortune in charges and exchange rates when travelling. I find a mix of both traditional and fully online services works well for me. I accept that you do occasionally need a branch, but these are now becoming exceptional events such as you describe. It is totally understandable therefore to see banks withdrawing very costly services that are no longer used regularly by the vast majority.

I do accept that this adoption has been relatively easy for me and that this must all be becoming increasingly difficult for people that do not use, do not have access to, or are simply unable to use certain technologies…

The trend of digital transactions replacing cash and cheques is a different issue to the one I asked about, which was about why the supposedly competing branches of different banks are usually found clustered together.

True. Your rather narrow question has since evolved into a broader discussion - one you may be pleased to hear I am now bowing out of.

I normally pop to London Bridge on the train for all those banks. Much easier than buses to Beckenham.

Or people who think that dependency on one device - for financial transactions, travel tickets and payments, communications, replacing maps with GPS etc - is extremely risky and undesirable. If you are dependent on your phone for so much, the impact of loss, theft, breakage, running out of battery etc is life-threatening.

Another thing is the quality of life argument. I would like to walk to my bank and take care of a few transactions where I do not have to input date of birth, PIN number, password, generate a one-time code or receive one by text.

I am not looking for more things to do with my phone.

But the alternative is being dependent on a single physical wallet full of things that are very difficult to replace and damaging if lost or stolen.

If I lose my phone, I can be reasonably confident it can’t be used by another person (activation lock and biometric security help ensure this), and I can get a new phone set up easily from a backup. Not to mention the tracking features that help the owner find lost devices.

Rather dramatic of you DF - loosing my two year old iPhone is hardly a life threatening event…

The best form of ‘biometric security’ is that local bank staff recognize you as a regular customer.

A friend followed their stolen iPhone to Heathrow, where the staff were less than helpful, and the tracking then disappeared.

This risk has been worsened by contactless payment cards, another ‘improvement’ given to us by progress and technology.

Disagree. I don’t want the security of my life savings to depend on the memory and integrity of a min-wage bank clerk.

How does that compare to your ability to track your physical wallet? I’ve had personal experience of digital tracking reuniting me with my iPhone on more than one occasion. I’d rather have tracking than not.

For me, contactless payments are an acceptable trade-off between convenience and risk. But plastic contactless cards are a risk, I admit.

Luckily, technical progress means I can now avoid carrying plastic contactless cards, and instead use iPhone and Apple Watch instead, both of which authenticate before transacting. My watch is secured with a pin code when I first use it, and locks if removed from my wrist. The phone uses Face ID. Neither device requires an internet connection to make payments.

But do require to be charged. I’ve had an unfortunate experience not too long ago where both my watch and phone failed to charge overnight on their usual cradle and come the morning were both as dead as the proverbial.

Now, my morning routine is very tightly timed and the gap between rolling out of bed and needing to be at the train station doesn’t allow for sitting around while things charge.

Luckily - my Oyster and cash cards don’t need anything fancy as electricity to work, so was able to get into work, but a coffee and blag a charger to carry on the rest of my day.

In summary - phones / watch’s etc… all very good and handy, but shouldn’t be your only means of accessing cash / services that are needed on a day to day basis.

Technical progress will, again, save the day, when phones support passive NFC/RFID (where all power comes from the reader, and not the phone). It’s only a matter of time.

My elderly neighbours who have never used computers, and the very many illiterate and innumerate adults, are being frozen out. A proliferation of social fragmentation is being facilitated by technology.

What about elderly and disabled people who cannot easily get to a physical bank branch to carry out transactions?

My nan loves her smartphone. It makes banking (and keeping in contact with family) more accessible for her.

Seems a shame to imagine people cannot use technology simply because they’re old?

And the illiterate and innumerate are going to struggle to bank no matter whether it’s phone-based or branch-based. We should accommodate these people as far as possible, but to hold back technical progress on account of a tiny minority? That would be a shame - because technical progress may ultimately deliver solutions that make their lives much easier.

Passive cards are also getting smarter too. Perhaps you’ve already seen this stuff:

https://www.gemalto.com/financial/cards/emv-biometric-card

Basically the passive NFC card can harvest enough power from the reader to run a fingerprint ID reader and tester in the card itself (and some also have a LED in the card to show success/fail). No more chip and pin, just chip and fingerprint. Batteries not required.

Not a matter of imagination, I’m referring to actual real embodied human beings known to me. Also maybe people could do it, but don’t want to.

Just listened to “From our own correspondent”. A journalist was back in China and discovered that it was pretty well impossible to use cash - it was all done on phones. And the irony of this happening in the country that invented paper currency.

I Personally find it a real pain not having the local Barclays.
I dont do telephone banking or Online Banking intact same goes for my OH which means whenever we want to pay in a cheque (yes we still use cheques occasionally ) we have to use our free time waiting in line at Lordship lane or Peckham, ditto if we need to move money about same again.
The queues in LL Barclays are ridiculous!

I have good news for you. You can make deposits into a Barclays account at the Post Office. They have a service called ‘Everyday Banking’ which allows account holders of participating banks to make withdrawals and deposits.

https://www.postoffice.co.uk/everydaybanking

Maybe you don’t need to if your bank is a participant in the scheme - click on the above link for a list of banks in the scheme.

I never knew that! brilliant news- thanks for posting this info

Thanks for the info, Never knew any of this.

Thanks. I did not know that.

I only found out a couple of days ago, when I was looking into opening an account at the Post Office. They have stopped opening accounts and all their own current accounts have been closed, but apparently they are still offering the ‘Everyday Banking’ for customers of other banks.

How long before the rest follow suit?
Gotta love those banks. Always thinking of ever more ingenious ways of making our lives easier.
THANKS GUYS!!!

The BBC take on the situation

With Nationwide currently I can withdraw cash at the Post Office, but not make deposits. Withdrawing cash seems relatively easy - ATM’s at the station and Sainsbury’s, but making deposits is the problem.

You have to admit that you are making a choice – nobody is stopping you from using Online Banking! The banks have given you these amazing ways of achieving most things, they just happen to be different from the ones that existed 20 years ago. I’m very thankful for the progress that exists, and while it may be annoying that you can’t pop into a local branch to withdraw a bag full of money, the number of times you would expect the average person to need to do that is so limited that it makes perfect economic sense for the banks to close lots of branches (presumably based on footfall).

And here’s a passive-powered biometric card, announced yesterday:

Daily Mail campaign to keep banking services at the Post Office

Yes I got the letter about this from my bank.
Its a blooming joke!