Member's statement: Danske Bank Closures
Member's statement by Mr John Stewart on .
- MLA
- Mr John Stewart
- Party at the time
- Ulster Unionist Party
- Date
- 12 February 2024
- Type
- Member's statement
- Business
- Members' Statements
- Heading
- Danske Bank Closures
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 4217585
Read the official Assembly record
Text
On Friday, customers of the Carrickfergus branch of Danske Bank, and of branches in several other locations across Northern Ireland, received word that their branch will close in June. That is devastating news for Carrickfergus High Street and for retail banking throughout east Antrim. In the past five years, five high street bank branches have closed in Carrickfergus, as have 10 others across Larne and Newtownabbey collectively. When I spoke to a representative of Danske Bank on Friday, he told me that customers should not worry and that their accounts would be seamlessly transferred to the Abbey Centre branch nine miles away. That is little comfort, I am sure, to the many elderly customers who rely on branch access for deposits and withdrawals on a daily basis. When I pointed that out to him, I was told that customers could use post offices to make deposits and withdrawals, but he was clearly unaware that Carrickfergus town centre no longer has a post office since the last one closed over a year ago. It is wholly unacceptable to assume or demand that every single banking customer will use online banking. Elderly and disabled customers, businesses, charities and many other organisations rely on branch access, yet branches are rapidly disappearing from our towns and villages. Last year, the UK Government passed the Financial Services and Markets Act 2023, but that has failed to address bank closures across the UK — a number that totals hundreds each month. A recent report from Advice NI found that 90% of the population use a bank at some point in the year and that 40% use a local branch at least once a month, but, despite the assurances and platitudes from well-prepared PR teams, the reality is that the banking industry simply does not care about customers. If it did, it would not be closing branches at the speed that it is doing so. We need an incentive and a legal requirement for a minimum level of local branch access for our banking customers. We all know the pre-rehearsed arguments that banks make. They say that cash use is significantly down since 2015 and that branches and ATMs are less profitable. However, banks are not charities. In fact, they are far from it; they are hugely profitable organisations. For example, Danske Bank, which has announced this closure, had a pre-tax profit of £103 million last year, and the banking industry has collectively netted profits of £17 billion since 2015. With such massive windfalls, surely the industry can afford to maintain a basic level of cash access network. I have written to the Minister for the Economy to ask him to work with Ministers in Westminster to put more pressure on banks to stop the never-ending closures, starting with the Danske Bank in Carrickfergus. I also call on the Minister and everyone in the Chamber to support the volunteers who are ready and waiting to set up a series of community banks across our towns and villages. They are dedicated to providing sustainable, not-for-profit banking at the heart of our communities, even if the big institutions are not.
521 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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