Westpac acknowledges bank shut downs have a significant impact in some regional communities, but executives say accelerated closures are driven by customer demand for digital services.
Westpac chief customer engagement officer Ross Miller told a Senate inquiry into regional bank closures on Thursday it recognised not all customers were ready to “move online”.
“For a small minority going into a bank branch is still preferred and necessary,” he said.
“This means while there are fewer people using our branches, the absence of one is to have a significant impact on some.”
Mr Miller said decisions to close regional banks were not made lightly, with customer use and proximity to other branches taken into account.He said 96 per cent of transactions were now digital.
The first hearing is being held in Sale, south east Victoria, which was set to lose its Westpac branch until the company postponed the closure during the inquiry.
Mr Miller said Westpac notified the Wellington Shire Council of the closure via email rather than in-person, a process that is under review.
The executives met the council while in Sale for the hearing, the inquiry heard.
But there were no immediate plans to visit other towns where closures were flagged and postponed, including Cloncurry and Tully in Queensland.
“You make billions of dollars in profits a year, why can’t you travel to country towns and talk to them about closures?” committee chair Senator Matt Canavan asked.
Mr Miller said: “Senator, now that we have postponed them, we can take the time to engage with councils. We’re reviewing each of those branches during the postponement.”
The inquiry is investigating the impact of increasing branch closures across regional and rural Australia.
The latest data from the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority showed banks closed 677 regional and rural branches in the five years to June.
The coalition government’s Regional Banking Taskforce, which handed down its final report in September, heard some communities were forced to travel hundreds of kilometres to do their banking.
Vulnerable people, farmers and small businesses were worse off when a bank shut and some rural people felt a closure signalled the death of a town.
Senator Canavan wrote to banks on February 10, asking them to halt regional closures in an act of good faith to the inquiry.
The Commonwealth Bank said it would pause further regional closures for the rest of the year, while Westpac postponed eight shut downs and said it would not make decisions on any others.
NAB said it would continue with restructures, including closures, while ANZ said pausing 14 planned shut downs would be too disruptive.
All four big banks said the vast majority of customers moved to online services and closures were based on declining foot traffic.
The inquiry is due to report back in December.
– AAP
