Nationwide Building Society is closing our Southgate branch in May 2022. Andrew Westhead, our Regional Director, explains why in the note below.
Dear Cllr Ioannou,
After careful consideration Nationwide Building Society has made the decision to close our Southgate branch at 69 Chase Side on Thursday 19th May.
Branches play a vital role for our members and the communities in which they live. That’s why we extended our promise originally made in 2019 to leave no town or city where we currently have a presence without a Nationwide branch until at least 2023. We’ve committed to maintaining a strong network, upgrading over 245 branches and investing over £260 million since 2017. That’s a vastly different position from many of our competitors who continue to close significant numbers of branches. To put this into context, between 2015-2020 our network reduced by around five per cent compared to a sector average of 32 per cent.
However, for branches requiring significant investment and where there are modern branches nearby, we must consider whether it is in the interest of our wider membership to keep them open. We need to determine whether it makes more sense to use that money to improve and retain branches elsewhere in our network, particularly in areas where there is lower provision.
This is the case with Southgate where we have five branches within four miles, we know that 87 per cent of Southgate members are already using other branches and only one per cent of members use the branch exclusively and frequently.
Locally, we’ve invested in Wood Green, Muswell Hill, Finchley, Enfield and Chingford ensuring people in the area have modern branches with the latest technology and services. This means we can focus on delivering better services that will provide our members with the best face-to-face experience and help to protect our branch network in the long term.
We would like to encourage any member who needs any support to contact their branch to talk through their options in more detail. Members can call us on 0345 266 0220 or email Andrew.WestheadOffice@nationwide.co.uk.
Nationwide is a member of the Access to Cash Action group which has been created to protect access to cash and as part of this agreement all closures are subject to LINK’s independent assessment process to ensure the community’s cash needs are met.
We never take a decision to close a branch lightly and only go ahead after it has been thoroughly assessed to ensure it is the right decision for all our members. We are now focused on doing as much as we can to help those members who may need additional support. As part of this programme of work we will:
- Write to members who interacted with the closing branch three times in 12 months. This is above the minimum requirement of industry guidance of three times in six months. As we only offer personal banking, we do not have the challenge of communicating to businesses that recent regulatory guidance has highlighted.
- Ensure members can speak to us face to face, by telephone or email to discuss how they would like to interact with us in the future. The telephone and emails are answered locally to ensure colleagues understand the communities impacted.
- Proactively call vulnerable members who have a high branch dependency to discuss the upcoming closure and tailor individual support for them. We contact these members prior to closure and follow up post closure to ensure they continue to feel supported.
- Offer a clear and concise impact assessment, detailing other ways members can access our services.
- Put the details of the closure on our website as well as displaying posters and leaflets in branch.
- Adhere to the industry’s access to banking standards by providing timely notice to our members as well as clarity about the alternative places and ways to bank with us.
If you have any questions please do get in contact with Guy Bilgorri, Lead Policy and Public Affairs Manager, at guy.bilgorri@nationwide.co.uk or on 07500 923412. He would be happy to arrange a meeting to discuss the changes and our investment in the community.
I have attached the Impact Assessments for the branch which can be found online.
Yours sincerely,
Andrew Westhead The contents of this email are intended exclusively for the addressee. If you are not the addressee you must not read, use or disclose the email contents; you should notify us immediately [by clicking ‘Reply’] and delete this email. Nationwide monitors emails to ensure its systems operate effectively and to minimise the risk of viruses. Whilst it has taken reasonable steps to scan this email, it does not accept liability for any virus that may be contained in it. Nationwide Building Society is authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority under registration number 106078. Nationwide Building Society, registration no. 355B. Head Office: Nationwide House, Pipers Way, Swindon, Wiltshire SN38 1NW.
