What do Radville, Stoughton, Hafford, Turtleford and Norquay all have in common? Certainly not physical proximity. They’re all destined to lose a major bank branch this year. The reason for these impending closures is that larger banks are realizing, looking at the raw numbers, that there isn’t much profit in running banks in little towns and villages in Saskatchewan.
There are plenty of fancy terms being bandied about by spokespeople for those larger banks, describing “footprint evaluation,” and the impending “evolution” of the “core functions” of banks in small centres, but regardless of how much sense that jargon makes, these banks are using euphemisms for what they actually plan on doing: closing branches. This is ill-conceived, and is going to be the equivalent of denying a lot of people service.
Yeah, there is an overarching trend everywhere that foot traffic to banks is falling, with the rise of mobile technology and Internet banking, but there are plenty of exceptions to that trend in small town Saskatchewan. There’s plenty of need out there. Not much compared to big cities, but it’s still there.
It’s an easy decision to make for the bosses of big banks, closing branches in places that most of those folks in their offices in Toronto probably couldn’t hope to point out on a map, but for those in those towns, such decisions will be an enormous impediment.
There are plenty who probably don’t have the gas money, or time to be taking a rip to a larger centre on a regular basis. There are plenty of people who need those banks to stay open.
CIBC has already taken some heat for its decision last year, to start shuttering banks in Saskatchewan. People in Birch Hill were, to put it tersely, completely screwed over, when the bank shut down its local branch there. Since the bank didn’t have — and to my knowledge, still doesn’t have — ATMs in Birch Hill, residents who stuck with CIBC have to drive half an hour to Prince Albert, to do their banking.
Despite the bank’s promise to “consider” putting an ATM in the town, that didn’t happen. So, a town with a huge population of seniors, many of whom I imagine don’t use mobile or online banking, still have to regularly drive to Prince Albert. So much for “evolving core functions…”
Another exasperating decision in the works is CIBC’s plan to close its Stoughton branch. You know, that little town about an hour north of us that has plans to build a refinery. Yes, it’s seen a population drop, but let’s not forget that that was in the face of successive years of depressed resource commodities. And I don’t need to tell you what a potential new refinery means in a place like Stoughton, with its proximity to the oil patch.
In many of those towns and villages, there’s going to be a shift to local credit unions. Despite all this futuristic talk among the head honchos of big banks about everyone and their dog using mobile technology and the Internet to do banking, it may come as a surprise, but a lot of people in places like small-town rural Saskatchewan don’t have the kinds of access to high-speed Internet and powerful mobile bandwidth that’s available in those big cities those bosses presume the world revolves around.
Already, news sources in this province are reporting examples of residents and businesspeople in towns like Radville, who are switching to local credit unions as bigger banks make their exodus from smaller centres.
And, why not? I don’t want to sound too biased, but a local credit union is specifically designed to suit the needs of small communities, and unlike giant banks, the people switching to those credit unions have an opportunities to sit on local boards and help call the shots, rather than having dictates dispatched from the ivory towers of some head office in Toronto.
This switch, if it does happen, will have a two-fold beneficial effect for new customers of local credit unions, as well as existing customers, since there will be an uptick in revenue for those credit unions, which means more shares given back to the customers who make the switch.
