In this digital age, should we worry about bank branch closures? Yes we should

Almost a decade after the financial crisis loomed, our high streets and town centres are full of life again: who ever thought consumers could sustain so many cafés, bakeries and nail bars? But the revival is being undermined by yet another wave of bank branch closures, leaving small businesses adrift and personal customers at the mercy of call centres and insecure, ill-designed online platforms. More than a thousand branches have closed over the past two years, and another 400 or so are scheduled to go soon. HSBC is showing the way with a savage cull of its network.

Oh well, you might say, banking really ought to be a digital business by now, and if high streets are so vigorous, those redundant premises will swiftly be filled by hipster artisans doing all manner of delightful things. After all, RBS tells us that the number of visits to bank counters has fallen dramatically since 2010, while phone-based transactions have quadrupled.