Lloyds Banking Group announced it will ditch its mobile van banking services as part of the business' online focus.
The banking vans have visited towns all over the UK to assist customers who needed to make general inquiries, cash cheques, withdraw money, and many other financial transactions.
The branches’ last routes will commence in May and follow the decision to restructure its banking services. That decision will result in 1,600 job losses for employees in the Lloyds Banking Group, which also includes the Halifax and Bank of Scotland. However, 830 jobs will also be created due to the restructuring.
As part of the announcement, Lloyds published data to show the usage of the vans of every route. The report included the number of customers who used the service, alongside the number of regular users too.
One example in Donnington showed there were just 11 regular users in the six months leading to July 2023, whereas other cases like Louth, had 101 customers who used the vans. The decision was made as not enough customers were using the service, according to the banking group.
In an attempt to appease the thousands of customers impacted by the scrapping of the mobile vans, Lloyds will introduce ‘Community Bankers’ to offer financial support.
‘Community Bankers’ to replace some mobile bank branches
These hubs will be in a dedicated space or community venue where customers may not have a local branch, although no transactions can take place.
Since 2015, Lloyds has closed 718 of its branches, with plans to shelve an extra 56 more already in the pipeline for 2024, according to data from Which?
But, Lloyds is not the only high street bank to ditch hundreds of locations, as Barclays has also disclosed plans to scrap 64 branches throughout 2024. This is further to the 203 sites already shut down the previous year and part of the 1,140 total closures since 2015 – the most of any bank in the UK.
As a whole, banks and mutuals have pulled the shutters down on 5,828 branches since January 2015 – an average of 54 closures a month – according to Which?’s data.
Decision to shut branches is ‘particularly disappointing’
Sam Richardson, deputy editor of Which? Money, said: “While the decision to shut any form of bank branch is a commercial one for individual firms to take, Lloyds’ decision is particularly disappointing given these vans were meant to serve rural areas with limited branch coverage.
“It highlights why we need strong regulator involvement, to ensure that alternatives such as shared banking hubs are more quickly rolled out, and then properly maintained.”
A spokeswoman for Lloyds Banking Group said: “Customers have used our mobile branches much less over time and some locations now have as little as two customers using the service.
“We’ll be introducing more community bankers, alongside the other options customers already have for their banking, including the Post Office, online, our mobile apps, phone banking, video services and web chat.”
