When I was a teenag­er RBC opened a sav­ings ac­count for me as part of their Young Lead­ers pro­gramme.

The home branch for that ac­count was Park Street, Port-of-Spain.

That branch, how­ev­er, is no longer around.

On Jan­u­ary 10, last year the Park Street branch was of­fi­cial­ly closed.

In an in­ter­view then, RBC’s di­rec­tor of sales ef­fec­tive­ness, strate­gic and cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions of Caribbean bank­ing, Jacque­line Tag­gart said the de­ci­sion to close the Park Street branch was made “af­ter an ex­ten­sive re­view of client bank­ing habits, branch traf­fic, and oth­er RBC bank­ing op­tions in close prox­im­i­ty.”

All op­er­a­tions were con­sol­i­dat­ed with the In­de­pen­dence Square, Port-of-Spain branch.

The Park Street branch is not the on­ly RBC lo­ca­tion that has closed its doors in re­cent times.

Since 2013 RBC has closed more than a dozen branch­es in all.

One of the lat­est clo­sure was the RBC San Juan branch which shut its doors on May 28.

RBC ad­vised its San Juan clients that they too will be ac­com­mo­dat­ed at the In­de­pen­dence Square branch.

RBC, how­ev­er, is not the on­ly com­mer­cial bank op­er­at­ing lo­cal­ly that has cho­sen to per­ma­nent­ly close the doors of its branch­es.

On No­vem­ber 30, the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic caused state-owned First Cit­i­zens to per­ma­nent­ly close its Bu­reau De Change at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port.

The bu­reau was orig­i­nal­ly closed tem­porar­i­ly on March 21 in re­sponse the ar­rival of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic on T&T’s shores.

First Cit­i­zens ad­vised cus­tomers that those want­i­ng to con­duct for­eign ex­change trans­ac­tions could in­stead utilise their Tu­na­puna, Ari­ma or any oth­er con­ve­nient branch lo­ca­tion.

This week Sco­tia­bank T&T an­nounced that by April next year it ex­pects to close two of its branch­es and one of its sales cen­tres.

The pan­dem­ic, how­ev­er, is not the rea­son for their clo­sures.

In­stead Sco­tia­bank says it has seen a trend with cus­tomers us­ing branch­es less fre­quent­ly.

“Our dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, dri­ven by our cus­tomers’ chang­ing pref­er­ences, has been key in our abil­i­ty to grow our busi­ness and im­prove ef­fi­cien­cies. Thanks to our in­vest­ments in tech­nol­o­gy, we have more vi­able dig­i­tal al­ter­na­tives for con­duct­ing bank­ing busi­ness. Cus­tomers are us­ing our branch­es dif­fer­ent­ly to­day – less fre­quent­ly, as they com­plete more trans­ac­tions on­line, and more for com­plex needs,” Sco­tia­bank told the Busi­ness Guardian.

Sco­tia­bank said as a re­sult of these fac­tors, and af­ter a re­view of its branch and ser­vice de­liv­ery net­work in Trinidad, the fol­low­ing de­ci­sions were made:

Ef­fec­tive Fri­day, March 18, 2022, the Cipero and Rush­worth Streets Branch to close its doors to the pub­lic and its op­er­a­tions will be con­sol­i­dat­ed in­to the near­by High Street, San Fer­nan­do Branch.

Ef­fec­tive Thurs­day April 14, 2022, the Park and Pem­broke Streets Branch will close its doors to the pub­lic and its op­er­a­tions will be con­sol­i­dat­ed in­to the near­by In­de­pen­dence Square, Port of Spain Branch.

Ef­fec­tive Fri­day, March 25, 2022, the Cunu­pia Sales Cen­tre will close its doors and its op­er­a­tions will be con­sol­i­dat­ed in­to the Cunu­pia Branch.

“Cus­tomers are in the process of be­ing con­tact­ed and in­formed of these changes. To help en­sure a seam­less tran­si­tion, they are be­ing ad­vised three to four months in ad­vance of the clo­sures so that we can work with them to ad­dress any con­cerns they may have. Their ac­counts will be trans­ferred au­to­mat­i­cal­ly, and no ac­tion is re­quired from them at this time. Post con­sol­i­da­tions, we will main­tain the ATMs at Cipero and Rush­worth Streets and Park and Pem­broke Streets to en­sure we con­tin­ue to serve the ar­eas,” Sco­tia­bank stat­ed.

“We are work­ing to en­sure that there is min­i­mal im­pact to our em­ploy­ees at these lo­ca­tions. Any af­fect­ed em­ploy­ees will be treat­ed fair­ly and with re­spect,” it stat­ed.

Sco­tia­bank said the de­ci­sions were not made eas­i­ly and were com­plet­ed on­ly af­ter care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion of sev­er­al fac­tors.

“We sin­cere­ly ap­pre­ci­ate the loy­al­ty of our cus­tomers and look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing to serve them in branch and through our award win­ning mo­bile and on­line chan­nels,” it stat­ed.

“Sco­tia­bank re­mains com­mit­ted to T&T and the wider Caribbean. We con­tin­ue to in­vest heav­i­ly in our op­er­a­tions here, as seen in the full roll out of our next gen­er­a­tion ATMs, mo­bile app up­grades and in­tro­duc­tion of new prod­ucts and ser­vices, all pro­vid­ing our cus­tomers with greater ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty and con­ve­nience,” it stat­ed.

A study provoca­tive­ly ti­tled “The Death of Banks,” has re­in­forced the view that tra­di­tion­al banks are on the de­cline, cit­ing ad­vance­ments in tech­nol­o­gy and in­ter­net ac­cess for the con­tin­u­ing trend.

Among the key in­sights not­ed by the study were that bank branch num­bers in the Unit­ed States have fall­en by 6.5 per cent since 2012.

“Based on cur­rent trends the num­ber of phys­i­cal banks could fall to few­er than 16,000 by 2030, a num­ber not seen since 1965. Cur­rent trends sug­gest that all bank branch­es could be closed by 2034,” the study stat­ed.

In the Re­pub­lic Fi­nan­cial Hold­ings Ltd’s an­nu­al re­port for 2021 pres­i­dent Nigel Bap­tiste said the group will con­tin­ue to im­prove its dig­i­tal strat­e­gy.

“The group al­so con­tin­ues to work on im­prov­ing its dig­i­tal strat­e­gy that was brought to the fore­front dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, to in­crease our abil­i­ty to con­tin­ue adding val­ue to our cus­tomers and staff.

“The group rolled out its new in­ter­net/mo­bile bank­ing plat­form in a num­ber of ter­ri­to­ries through­out the year start­ing with Guyana. The roll­out in T&T was plagued with var­i­ous chal­lenges which re­sult­ed in a high lev­el of dis­sat­is­fac­tion from a num­ber of clients,” he stat­ed.

“We are tru­ly sor­ry for that ex­pe­ri­ence and the Group has bol­stered its struc­ture and re­vised its process­es to en­sure no re­peat in oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions and im­proved roll­out of fu­ture tech­nol­o­gy ad­vances in all coun­tries in the months to come,” he stat­ed.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with ANSA Bank’s man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Robert Le Hunte when the bank of­fi­cial­ly opened its doors in April said in­ter­na­tion­al­ly the mar­ket cap of Pay­pal, which is a fin­tech-type com­pa­ny, was now worth more than long-stand­ing fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions JP Mor­gan and Bank of Amer­i­ca.

“So to put that in­to con­text it tells you that bank­ing as you know it is chang­ing in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. In North Amer­i­ca 60 per cent of all the in­stal­ment loans, con­sumer loans, are re­al­ly done by fin­tech- type or­gan­i­sa­tions not nec­es­sar­i­ly com­mer­cial banks,” Le Hunte said then.

Le Hunte promised that Ansa Bank will put its mon­ey where its mouth is and in­vest in tech­nol­o­gy and be­come a dig­i­tal bank.

“We have to change our op­er­at­ing sys­tem, we have to in­vest in cer­tain things up­front and there­fore we will not be at­tempt­ing to be a tra­di­tion­al bank with all the branch­es and so forth we will be look­ing at us­ing tech­nol­o­gy to get to the cus­tomers, so we see this (a cell­phone) as our branch,” he said.

The goal, Le Hunte said, is to even­tu­al­ly have cus­tomers do­ing 90 to 95 per cent of their busi­ness on­line.