The NatWest Group is closing six more branches next month as it pushes ahead with its plan to shutter 54 high street banks this year. The group – which includes NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland and Ulster Bank – announced the plans in January with all the branches set to go before June. Overall, 53 closures of NatWest branches were announced on top of one more from a previous announcement.
Last year NatWest Group shut 48 sites and in 2023 it closed nearly 20 branches. At the time, the high street banking giant again blamed the move on the rise of online banking, noting that of its 19 million customers, 90% predominantly use online banking. Since 2015, NatWest has closed more than 1,400 bank branches across its network.
NatWest is just one of many high street lenders looking to reduce their portfolio in recent years. Just this week, Santander announced the closure of 95 bank branches. Alongside this, it confirmed that it would be reducing the opening hours times across 36 locations while turning a further 18 into “counter-free banks”. The move is set to result in over 750 job losses.
According to data from the consumer group Which? banks and building societies have closed 6,100 branches since January 2015 at a rate of around 53 each month. Lloyds Banking Group – which is comprised of Lloyds Bank, Halifax, and Bank of Scotland – has shut over 1,200 sites. At the same time, Barclays has reduced its network by over 1,220 branches. This is the most from any individual chain.
On the closures, a NatWest spokesperson said at the time: “Our customers are using digital banking more than ever before – over 80% of our active current account holders now use our digital services and over 97% of retail accounts with us are now opened online.
“We are also significantly investing in refreshing our network – we expect to invest in excess of £20million in our network across the UK in 2025 to improve customer service, enhance the look and feel of our branches, and reduce the environmental impact of our buildings, as well as continuing to invest in shared solutions like the Post Office and Banking Hubs.
“Like any business, we strive to meet our customers’ changing needs and expectations and we’ve been responding to the industry wide shift towards digital services by investing to broaden what customers can do themselves and to offer them greater personalisation.”
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