Banking giant HSBC has announced it will shut 114 bank branches across the UK next year – with a handful of banks in the North East earmarked for closure.
Some of the branches set to close are now serving fewer than 250 people a week, HSBC said.
The bank says around 100 staff could leave the company as a result of the closures.
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It stressed that it hopes to redeploy all its employees at affected branches to other roles within HSBC, either to other branches or to a different position.
Jackie Uhi, HSBC UK’s managing director of UK distribution, said: “People are changing the way they bank and footfall in many branches is at an all-time low, with no signs of it returning. Banking remotely is becoming the norm for the vast majority of us.
“The decision to close a branch is never easy or taken lightly, especially if we are the last branch in an area, so we’ve invested heavily in our ‘post-closure’ strategy, including providing free tablet devices to selected branch customers who do not already have a device to bank digitally, alongside one-to-one coaching to help them migrate to digital banking.”
The bank plans to investing tens of millions of pounds in updating and improving its remaining branch network of 327 sites across the country.
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Some branches in the North East will shut next year with closing dates staggered from next May through to June.
Here are the North East HSBC branches closing in 2023
- Whitley Bay – May 2, 2023
- Whitby – May 16, 2023
- South Shields – June 13, 2023
- Gosforth – July 18, 2023
- Wetherby – July 11, 2023
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