Shared banks could boost lending, says FPB
The Forum of Private Business (FPB) is lobbying for the UK's major banks to share local branches as a solution to spiralling closures.
The pressure group has joined forces with the Campaign for Community Banking Services (CCBS) to warn that the impact of bank closures on businesses is in danger of being overlooked.
According to CCBS data, 7,555 banks – 44 per cent of local branches – have closed since 1990.
Both parties are piling on the pressure after it was revealed that the country's high-street banks missed their Project Merlin lending targets again last quarter.
"Regardless of the Project Merlin lending targets there is a serious risk that the impact of the alarming decline in local bank branches is being missed," said FPB chief executive Phil Orford.
"The government should act without delay to address the situation and pressure banks to genuinely think locally and consider branch sharing as an option. It works in elsewhere so why not in the UK?"
Orford added that while competition between banks was important, branch sharing "shouldn’t be seen as an anathema".
"It is difficult to see how reducing local services can possibly make a business more competitive," he said.
The CCBS’s latest Last Bank in Town analysis, 414 rural communities in the UK have just one bank left, with 190 of these unprotected by banks’ 'non closure' pledges.
