Adam Smith Institute

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What, exactly, do we expect about bank branches?

The Sunday Times tells us that as bank branches close they do so disproportionately in poorer areas of the country. Or among poorer people perhaps.

Well, yes, we suppose so. What would anyone expect to be happening?

Abandoned: how the poor lost bank branches but the rich kept theirs

There has been a shocking rate of bank closures in Britain’s hard-up and less well-connected areas.

We have a new technology which is a substitute for the old. True, internet banking isn’t exactly the same as the physical kind but then no substitutes are perfectly so.

Some part of the old way of doing things will give way to the new. Obviously enough it’ll be the less profitable part of the old which switches over to that new.

That banking to those with little money is less profitable than banking to those with more is not, hugely, a surprise. So, what would we expect in a time of technological change? That the banking system closes expensive branches in poorer areas more than it does so in richer.

That is, matters are panning out just as even a cursory consideration of the issues would predict. Which leaves just the one interesting question.

And?