A week rarely goes by without news of yet more high street bank branches closing.
But not all those at the helm of financial services are leaving their customers to deal with an automated approach to managing money.
Alun Williams, the chief executive of Swansea Building Society, has devised a different "people-centred" approach to finance that means the Society is trying to help keep high streets alive by, instead, opening new branches.
An Access to Banking survey carried out by the National Assembly for Wales shows 87% of personal banking customers have been impacted by the closure of bank branches. Yet Swansea Building Society is doing the exact opposite to these major financial institutions through its dedication to opening not closing branches.
With high street banks closing thousands of their branches in recent years, Swansea Building Society’s philosophy is in stark contrast to most financial institutions.
The building society was recently ranked at 31 out of 43 based on group assets of £309m.
"While high street banks continue to close branches and make long-serving staff redundant, we are surveying the potential in south and mid Wales to continue our branch expansion plans to further widen our geographic footprint and serve more communities," Mr Williams said.
Swansea Building Society was established in 1923 and today has branches in Swansea, Mumbles, Carmarthen and Cowbridge. Its head office is located at 11/12 Cradock Street in Swansea, which is now an administration centre following the opening of its new retail branch in Swansea city centre.
Most Read
With 78% of survey respondents claiming the closure of local banks has had an impact on the wider local economy in their area, the Society’s vision is also helping to revive a diminishing high street.
"Our new Swansea flagship branch at 1-4 Portland Street opened in January 2019. The branch is in the heart of the city centre and has improved facilities for disabled and hard of hearing customers along with additional meeting rooms for increased privacy," Mr Williams said.
"Importantly, our new branch has enabled our products and services to be as conveniently accessible to our customers as possible. I believe the branch has also helped improve our brand awareness as well as Swansea’s city centre itself with our new attractive, prominent high street location.
"When you compare this to empty and deteriorating high street buildings, reduced footfall on the high street and a poor sense of community, it’s clear to us that having financial branches like Swansea Building Society available on the high street is a significant plus," said Mr Williams.
Regional growth
The Society has a strong presence beyond Swansea, enabling people across South West Wales to have face-to-face access to financial services. Its Mumbles branch opened in 2010, followed by its Carmarthen branch in 2015 and finally its Cowbridge branch – the regional hub for the Society in South East Wales and a former Yorkshire Building Society branch – opened during December 2017.
The Society is one of only three remaining mutual building societies in Wales and the only one with its headquarters in South West Wales. It remains one of the few financial institutions in the 海角视频 that has no wholesale funding or support from the Bank of England in the form of cheap funding.
"Our balance sheet is funded entirely by customer savings balances and our own capital reserves built up from retained profits over many years. This means we don’t have the expectation to generate profit and satisfy shareholders. Instead, we concentrate on pleasing our members through ploughing profits back into the Society," he said.
Don’t miss
"Our principal objective is the provision of mortgages secured on residential property. These mortgages are funded by savings balances deposited in a variety of traditional branch-based savings accounts.”
And this personalised, branch-based approach is very successful. The Society reached record-breaking highs in terms of its total assets, mortgage and savings balances in 2018, when it celebrated the largest single year of growth on both sides of its balance sheet in the Society’s history. As of December 31, 2018, it had total assets in excess of £300 million.
According to Mr Williams, the Society aims to continue delivering strong controlled growth through its existing branch network, as well as buck the trend within the financial sector through potentially expanding its branch network further within South Wales. Doing so will mean offering the Society’s people-focused style to more communities in Wales.
“Unlike larger building societies and banks, Swansea Building Society does not do digital web camera discussions with customers but instead takes a traditional in-person approach. This may seem old fashioned, but it is an approach that is familiar and welcomed in the local community, and makes banking easily accessible,” Mr Williams said.
Yet Swansea Building Society acknowledges that more people are using online banking facilities, which saves banks money.
"We don’t currently function online, but it is our intention to offer an online service in the future, where customers can access their account details online as well as use an online broker facility. It will also enable customers to apply online for savings and mortgages. However, we want to ensure that this online service is right for our customers. We don’t want to force it on them. We want customers to have the right to choose which service delivery channel suits them,” Mr Williams said.
Personal service
The Society currently employs 41 full-time staff and 24 part-time staff across its branches, who all embody an ethos of providing a personalised service and common-sense approach to the Society’s members.
"We provide an outstanding level of customer service, which new customers cannot believe, based on their experiences with other financial services institutions. The vast majority of our existing customers would recommend the Society to other prospective customers, which again supports our current branch expansion policy.
"Our success is testament to this business model of providing an individual service to our customers and understanding the needs of the communities we serve. Other banks and building societies are abandoning a personal service and their customers in rural areas and small towns, providing us with the opportunity to continue to gradually expand our services to benefit new and existing members," Mr Williams said.
This is clearly evidenced from the performance of the Society’s Carmarthen branch, which reached £50 million in mortgage balances during Autumn 2018 – an impressive figure considering the branch had been in operation for less than three years at this point. The Society’s branch in Cowbridge is also about to reach £50 million in mortgage balances, having only opened in December 2017.
"Our ability to consider less straightforward scenarios in a personal way and without the restriction of computer-controlled decisions played a significant factor in the growth of our Carmarthen branch.
"We realise that the big banks go for typical mortgages, whereas we provide a niche lending service for the self-employed, holiday lets and self-build properties, for example, with a competitive interest rate. We still implement a manual underwriting approach, so we can deal with more complex cases that you can’t simply put into a computer," Williams adds.
The Society clearly really makes the effort to understand the needs of the communities it serves and intends to build upon this through seeking opportunities for new branches in more Welsh towns.
"We have noted Cardigan, Monmouthshire and Abergavenny as potential future branch locations, with the go-ahead on these locations being driven by the demand for the Society’s services in these areas. We remain alert to opportunities in South and West Wales and we hope to increase our branch network in the next couple of years," Mr Williams concluded.