After years of setback, access to banking services most basic in the rural spain records since the end of 2021 a significant breakthrough thanks to the major sensitivity of the sector towards this problem and the impetus given by the Ministry of Economy. The entities, thus, reduced last year in 300 The number of municipalities without access physical to banking, from 3,230 to 2,930with which the neglected population fell by 97,955 peopleof the 657,557 in 2021 (1.4% of the Spanish population) to 559,602 (1.19%). If you add the non-bank ATMs and the ‘cash-back’ (possibility of obtaining cash in shops), the figures are even lower: 2,797 municipalities and 494,916 people (1% of the population), that is, 433 and 162,641 less than in 2021.
Thus it appears collected in a report prepared by the Valencian Institute of Economic Research (ivy) for bank employers (AEB, CECA and Unacc), to which EL PERIÓDICO has had access. The study, prepared by Professor Joaquin Maudosmake a follow-up of the degree of compliance plan for rural Spain agreed at the beginning of October by Economy and the sector. As such, it will be studied in the meeting that they will keep the next Thursday afternoon the vice president Nadia Calvinothe employersassociations of greater and that of consumers To its end. A meeting in which the operation of the plan to improve financial access for the elderly and the plan to alleviate the situation of mortgaged people in trouble due to the rise in the euribor.
Economy considers that the good evolution of the economy explains the low requests for the mortgage plan and asks the sector for data to prove it
Economy is in general terms satisfied with the evolution of initiatives for the rural spain and the greater. Regarding the Code of Good Practices mortgageThe number of requests it will be minor than expected (some sources estimate that they may be around 15,000), but the ministry sees it as a sign that the economy and employment have gone better than expected when it was signed last November. To demonstrate this and understand why there are no more requests, in the preparatory meetings he has asked the sector to breakdown of the old and new code, as well as numbers of renegotiations of mortgages not included in the plan and early repayments. In any case, the recent clash between Calviño and the second vice president, Yolanda Díaz, on account of mortgages and the former’s request that banks raise the rate of deposits have increased the uncertainty around the meeting.
Private label ATMs
The plan for the rural spain, which includes the commitment to bring face-to-face financial services to the “100% of the territory” for the first time in history, is divided into two blocks depending on the size of the populations: more or less than 500 inhabitants. In the first case, the number of excluded municipalities has dropped from 243 in 2021 to 164 in 2022. A second quarterly report suggests that between January and March the figure fell by five othersalthough it is required that at least 55 additional -mainly in Burgos and Leon– They will be added in the coming months as a result of ongoing agreements and tenders (the municipal elections have delayed some processes), with which the excluded population in this group of municipalities it will drop from 211,550 people in 2021 (0.45% of the total number of citizens) to around 88,000 (0.18%).
The banks, thus, brought access to their services to 69 new municipalities of more than 500 inhabitants between December 2021 and last March: in one a office (Santa María Tower, in Cáceres), in 33 they installed bank tellersin 21 it was possible to access banking through the post officesand in 14 through ‘ofibuses’while none of them used the contracting method financial agents. In addition, in another 15 of these towns you can withdraw and enter cash thanks to non-bank ATMswhich were not counted in the first study on the closing situation of 2021.
With the 55 municipalities with more than 500 inhabitants that are going to be added to the list in the coming months, banks will already have brought their services to 57% of those identified at the end of 2021. Its commitment is also to cover the entire population the next October, when one year has elapsed since the signing of the plan. To do this, it is finalizing the activation of the second stage of it: the installation of white label ATMs. Thus, in recent weeks it has negotiated the cost sharing between entities to do so through the payment company Redsysof which a good part of the banks are partners, but not all.
Alternatives to offices
Regarding the municipalities of less than 500 inhabitantsIn addition to the previous solutions, others are contemplated such as Post Cash (get cash from postmen) or the ‘cash back’ and ‘cash in shop’ (get cash in shops). In this group, the excluded municipalities fell by 354 in 2022, from 2,987 to 2,639 (88 thanks to ‘cash-back’ and 45 thanks to non-bank ATMs, not included in the 2021 report), and the unserved population fell by 93,083, from 446,007 to 352,924 people.
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In the total number of municipalities with more and less than 500 inhabitants, last year were up those no office (in 111, up to 4,533), but there was also an increase in those with a Bank cashier (in 86), financial agents (105), Mail (199) and mobile offices (twenty-one). Hence, the reduction in unattended populations in the year amounts to 300, to which are added the 133 served through ‘cash-back’ and non-bank ATMs.
The report highlights that, despite the reduction in the total number of offices in the country (from 1,367 to 17,648), Spain continues to have the third densest network in Europe (2,463 inhabitants per branch compared to the 3,232 community average). The total number of ATMs also decreased last year (by 2,406, up to 45,233), but the Spanish network is the EU fourth (995 inhabitants per ATM compared to the 1,344 European average). Likewise, the study underlines that of the 4,533 municipalities that did not have an office at the end of 2022, the 78.3% (3,550) did not have it neither in 2008the year in which the number of branches reached its historical maximum, “which means that the closure is concentrated in municipalities that currently still have at least one bank office.”
regional differences
Catalonia had 250 municipalities without physical access to financial services at the end of 2022, 10.9% of the total, with 71,233 people affected, 0.9% of the Catalan population. The bank, so removed from exclusion last year to 51 populationswhich benefited 18,560 people. Furthermore, in another 12 it was possible to access cash through non-bank ATMs or of ‘cash-back’ (withdrawal of cash in stores) at the end of last year, data not available when the report on the situation at the end of 2021 was prepared. By provinces, there is more unattended population in Lleida (25,653 people in 97 municipalities) and Girona (27,333 and 74) than in Barcelona (9.125 and 39) and tarragona (9.122 and 40).
By autonomous communities, the highest percentages of the population without access are registered in Castile and Leon (10.1%), Navarre (4.6%), Aragon (2.6%), Castilla la Mancha (1.8%), Estremadura (1.6%), Basque Country (1.1%) and The Rioja (1.1%). In contrast, there is no excluded population in Balearic, Canary, MurciaCeuta and Melilla and is practically non-existent (0.1%) in Andalusia, Galicia and Madrid. By provinces, Zamora registers 21.9% and there are also levels above 10% in Burgos, Leon and Salamanca. The communities with the highest degree of exclusion have concentrated the improvements in 2022. Thus, in Castilla y León, 26,500 people have benefited from the implementation of solutions in 120 municipalities.