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Date Published: 07/02/2022

ARCHIVED - Spain loses half of its bank branches in a decade

ARCHIVED ARTICLE

56% of municipalities in Spain now have no bank office

<span style='color:#780948'>ARCHIVED</span> - Spain loses half of its bank branches in a decade

In an effort to digitise financial services and cut down on manpower costs, Spanish banks have been closing local offices at a staggering rate in recent years, to the extent that the country has lost some 20,133 branches in the last decade – that’s more than 50%.

The massive closure of branches has come hand-in-hand with a wave of layoffs in the sector. Between December 2010 and 2020, some 84,204 employees have been laid off, the equivalent of a third of the overall jobs, according to the Bank of Spain.

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Spain now has 43.5 bank branches per 100,000 inhabitants and just 3.8 employees for every 1,000, both historical lows which have sparked countless protests around the country, particularly from the elderly and those living in rural areas with poor internet connection, who claim that the move towards internet-based services is isolating their communities.

In the last six years alone, more than 11,000 offices and almost 30,000 jobs have disappeared, leaving almost 600 localities completely without branches. Incredibly, there are now more towns in Spain without a branch than those with one.

This has understandably had a knock-on effect on customer services, with clients across Spain complaining of long wait times in queues and the impossibility of making a face-to-face appointment.

Of the ten banks with the largest presence on Spain, only Caixabank, Unicaja and Bankinter have increased their number of offices in the last six years, the first two due to large mergers with other financial institutions. The opposite trend has dominated among the remainder, with Banco Santander eliminating 45% of its branches during this period.

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