On a sad day for face-to-face banking, a major financial institution ended more than a century of tradition and closed its last metropolitan branch as it transforms into a digital-only entity.
The closure of the Bankwest branch at Mandurah Forum, a shopping center about an hour’s drive south of Perth’s CBD in Western Australia, follows the closure of 27 other branches in the Perth metropolitan area this year, and closure of its branches in all other capitals. city.
The closures follow the announcement last March by Bankwest owner Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) that the smaller institution would become a digital-only bank.
Bankwest, formerly owned by the Western Australian government, will convert its remaining 15 branches in the WA region to CBA in mid-December, but the parent company has offered no guarantee they will remain in operation beyond 2026.
At the time of the announcement in March, Bankwest CEO Jason Chan said closing the network was a difficult but necessary decision to ensure the bank’s sustainability.
He said falling patronage from the bank’s 550,000 customers in Western Australia no longer justified the cost of keeping branches spread across the vast state open, claiming they were handling an average of only 30 over-the-counter transactions per day in metropolitan branches and regional centers only processing 15 per day.
The end of face-to-face interactions by the bank ends the branch’s operations since it first opened in the state as the Agricultural Bank of Western Australia in 1895.
The closure of the Bankwest branch at Mandurah Forum, a shopping center about an hour’s drive south of Perth’s CBD in Western Australia, follows the closure of 27 other branches in the Perth metropolitan area this year.
“It’s very sad,” said Bankwest customer Lyn. Yahoo Finance.
‘This bank started out serving farmers before the name changed to Bankwest. Then the CBA bought it. Mandurah is traditionally a holiday and retirement area, so there are many older people. How devastating for your community.
‘How dare they limit our access to our own cash and their services, which should be widely available to us?
“My main concern is not for ourselves, but for our elders, for whom it can be very difficult to adapt to new technologies, move physically, drive or travel long distances.”
Bankwest said over-the-counter transactions at the Mandurah branch had fallen 30.6 per cent in the year to February this year, with a daily average of just 64.
The bank closed all of its East Coast branches in 2022.
The closures follow Bankwest owner Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s (CBA) announcement last March that the smaller institution would become a digital-only bank (pictured, CBA chief executive Matt Comyn).
More than 2,100 bank branches closed in Australia in the six years between 2017 and 2023, according to the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority.
Westpac had the highest number of branch closures last year, with 167, while Commonwealth Bank closed 73 branches, ANZ closed 72 and NAB closed 63, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.
Lenders defend branch closures as a necessary response to a changing customer base that now largely prefers digital services to physical banking.
But community concerns, particularly in regional areas where customers rely more on branch services, prompted CBA boss Matt Comyn to announce a moratorium on his bank’s branch closures until at least 2026.
Westpac later followed suit, but ANZ and NAB did not make a similar commitment.
ANZ recently faced angry backlash from locals after it announced the closure of its Katoomba branch in the Blue Mountains region of New South Wales.
The bank had promised in June not to close any regional branches for three years in exchange for federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers approving the acquisition of Suncorp Bank.
ANZ defended the decision, stating that the closure does not breach its commitment because Katoomba is “classified by the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ Australian Statistical Geography Standard as a major city location”.
But outraged locals claimed the bank sought a “loophole” to strip them of their branch from October 23.
