Confirmed - RBC Royal Bank to cut branch network by 20% by 2023 | RBC Royal Bank | Discussion forum

Top It Up said

I'm totally with @AltaRed on this.

For the record, Deutsche Postbank is NOT held by the German government but rather is a subsidiary of parent Deutsche Bank, which by the way, is having its own troubles these days.  

Right, but I believe it was originally a state-owned corporation prior to privatization many years ago.

Also, in the UK, Royal Mail is now a privatized, publicly-traded concern whose CEO was previously CEO of Canada Post Corp.

The only concern I'd have with postal banking is in institutionalizing a high labour cost structure by providing another source of revenue to sustain those labour costs. Otherwise, though, looking ahead 5, 10, and even 15 years, it's conceivable that the "Big 5" banks will each have cut their branch networks by 50%, reduced hours of operation in those that remain, and even the credit unions will have cut their branch networks modestly.

We've got all these rural postal outlets that are under-utilized, so why not take advantage of them? Whether that's for Canada Post to provide contractual counter and ATM services to multiple banking and credit union stakeholder partners or to provide its own banking services or even to provide both, I'm not sure. The former could actually be done without a banking license. They'd just need the technology and staff training in terms of regulatory compliance (i.e., KYC), of which they already have some by issuing money orders, doing MoneyGram wire transfers, and selling prepaid credit cards (with high fees!). In essence, Canada Post would be an agent or agency to banks and credit unions. (It already can verify identity for banks, credit unions, and the like, and makes a bit of money doing so.) HSBC Bank Canada used to have a Pender Island Agency location on B.C.'s Pender Island that had its own branch transit number. It was operated by Pender Island Realty Ltd, with the staff employees of Pender Island Realty, until late 2012 when HSBC closed it down. Island Savings Credit Union (now part of First West Credit Union) took over and renovated the space and, presumably, won many HSBC customers from that.

Cheers,
Doug

Top It Up said
Retail at every level and every genre is dying ... millennials are just to darned busy networking to have to take time out to go to the bank or do grocery shopping ... it's all about online.

A lot of the FI branches I witness closing are already small outlets and are/were in areas where the demographics are changing. Hell I'm a senior and I only go to my bricks and mortar branch a couplea times a year just to withdraw cash from the ATM (and I only go there now, because it's in the same shopping complex as my grocery store and liquor store), so I couldn't care less whether they stay or go.  

Yeah, and to add the point about bricks and mortar retail's decline, it's not just millennials but thrifty Baby Boomers and seniors that don't spend any money (or as little as possible).

When I think about all of that, it depresses me. 🙁

On the upside, kudos to you for using an ATM on the rare times you go in to a branch to get cash. A lot of seniors insist on using counter services to get their cash. I'm with you - I like the so-called "ugly teller," chiefly because you can avoid entirely the high pressure sales pitches at the counter. 😉

Plus, you've got more privacy. When I worked at HSBC, I basically had to quickly review the last month's worth of transactions for each client to uncover potential sales opportunities. So, I got to know a great deal about a person (i.e., how many trips to the liquor store they make in an average week, or on an average day, whether they gamble, etc.) before even talking to them.

Cheers,
Doug

Bill said
Big banks are smartly going after higher margin stuff where there's less competition, it's a deliberate component of the plan to repel parsimonious folks with low CLV.

And it's the young folks and their pied pipers who tell us we're all destroying their future & planet by our consumption, our travelling, etc, so now they're depressed because we're not spending freely - ?

Bottom line is today's people's first preferred tool for anything is via screen, so the marketplace is mirroring that in all sectors.  

CLV?

And, I should clarify, I'm not one of those "young folks" with a "pied piper" that thinks you're "destroying [my] future [...]". 😉

Cheers,
Doug

Thanks, Norman...I read in Affinity's 2018 annual report that they'd closed about 10 supposedly very small, rural branch locations, but wondered where they were. The fact that the branch had a staff of two (I suspect a Manager, Member Services, and a Teller, but could've also been an Account Manager and a Teller) does suggest it was a tiny, seldom used branch. The thing that concerns me, though, is how far is it to the nearest Affinity branch from Gronlid?

Edit: I'm going to go out on a limb and guess there's no branch in Fairy Glen (nearest village/hamlet), so the nearest branches would, presumably, be based in Tisdale (73 km from Gronlid, so quite a distance for someone without a car) and Melfort (33 km from Gronlid, less of a distance but still the equivalent of a drive from West Kelowna to Lake Country, roughly speaking).

Looks like there's no postal outlet in Gronlid, so wouldn't have helped them. As far as I can tell, there's a grain elevator, a school, a rural fire hall, a community hall, a saloon, a former credit union branch, and a bunch of houses. I suspect they're probably used to rural living.

Regarding our postal outlets and adding banking counter services, this would actually be trying to boost the postal outlet staff's productivity by adding additional services to the rural post offices and prevent more post office closures. So, it'd be a win-win strategy, I think, in adding banking services to a bank-less town/village/hamlet whilst trying to protect the post office.

Cheers,
Doug