The second largest building society in the UK recently announced it will be expanding by adding an additional 12 branches over the next two years, experts say.
Personal and business bank account provider Yorkshire Building Society, second only to Nationwide in terms of the number of members at 3.5 million, recently confirmed its plans to extend its branch network. With Norwich & Peterborough, Chelsea, and Barnsley, the mutual already boasts more than 220 branches, and and Yorkshire also plans to extend its 94-site strong agency network as well.
Yorkshire’s growth efforts are something of an anomaly in the current economic climate, where many bank and building societies have been scaling back their branch networks and reducing availability of mortgages and business loans. The top of the food chain in the building society market, Nationwide, decided to completely dismantle its 150-member agency network in 2010, as the mutual claimed that the profitability of the network was too low to merit its continuation.
Nationwide also drew ire for shuttering thirteen of its branches. The closures hit the South East region particularly hard, depriving these areas of much-needed access to finance.
Many other high street banks have been under pressure to cease branch closures as well, as some rural communities have had to face the loss of their only local financial services provider, with those without access to pubic transport left high and dry. Consumer campaigners have fought long and hard to put a stop to the practice, attempting to extract promises from High Street banking institutions to not close the last remaining branch in an isolated area – the news from Yorkshire BS may be welcome indeed to those concerned about the erosion of service provider availability in the UK, experts say.