Banking giant Santander UK will close another 95 branches, putting about 750 jobs at risk of redundancy.
The high street lender confirmed sweeping changes across its network which includes shutting the branches in June, while also cutting hours across 36 sites and switching 18 to be counter-free.
“As customer behaviour changes, we are ensuring that our branches remain fit for the future,” a spokesperson said.
“Our new combination of full-service branches, alongside work cafes, counter-free branches and reduced hours branches, aims to provide the right balance between digital banking and face-to-face money management and guidance.”
“Closing a branch is always a very difficult decision and we spend a great deal of time assessing where and when we do this and how to minimise the impact it may have on our customers.”
Santander said it will be left with 349 branches, down from 444 currently, after the overhaul, which will include five so-called work cafes.
The move will put about 750 jobs at risk if the plans get the go ahead after consultations with unions, the bank said.
It comes just weeks after Santander faced major issues with its mobile and telephone banking as well as technical problems within its branch network which left many customers unable to access their accounts.
The bank quickly resolved the issue and apologised for any “inconvenience caused”. It said any customer financially impacted would “not be left out of pocket”.
The incident was the latest in a growing list of outages for some of the UK’s biggest banks, with data published by the Treasury Committee revealing there have been more than 33 days’ worth of unplanned tech and system outages in the last two years for nine of the UK’s biggest banks and building societies.
Experts have previously said the banking sector and regulators are struggling to keep up with modern technology and embedding it in their large, complicated and often dated technology systems.
