30% less since 2005
More and more bank branches are closing
The number of bank branches has fallen sharply in recent years. Whereas 12 years ago there were over 5,100 branches of Raiffeisen, Bank Austria, Erste & Co. in Austria, today there are just over 3,500. At the same time, however, fees have risen sharply, criticizes the trade union-affiliated Momentum Institute.
Specifically, the number of branches in Austria has fallen by 1567 locations, or around 30 percent, since 2012, when the number peaked. The Raiffeisen sector has closed the most branches since 2005 with 729 branches. This corresponds to almost a third of the Raiba branch network. The Volksbanks (-316), which eliminated more than half of their branches after the near bankruptcy of their leading institution ÖVAG, closed the second largest number of branches. Erste Bank and Sparkassen (-303) have also thinned out their network.
"The journey to the bank is much longer for many customers. The disappearance of banks is also contributing to the death of town centers in rural areas or to bankless zones on the outskirts," says Oliver Picek from Momentum Institute.
At the same time, fees have successively climbed. Since 2005, there has been an average increase of around 50 percent across all banking services. However, the costs for account management, custody accounts etc. made the biggest leap between 2021 and 2023. In these two years, fees rose by a whopping 23%, driven by high inflation. "The banks earn money from higher interest payments from their customers anyway. Nevertheless, they have also increased fees without offering a better service," says Picek.
This article has been automatically translated,
read the original article here.
Kommentare
Willkommen in unserer Community! Eingehende Beiträge werden geprüft und anschließend veröffentlicht. Bitte achten Sie auf Einhaltung unserer Netiquette und AGB. Für ausführliche Diskussionen steht Ihnen ebenso das krone.at-Forum zur Verfügung. Hier können Sie das Community-Team via unserer Melde- und Abhilfestelle kontaktieren.
User-Beiträge geben nicht notwendigerweise die Meinung des Betreibers/der Redaktion bzw. von Krone Multimedia (KMM) wieder. In diesem Sinne distanziert sich die Redaktion/der Betreiber von den Inhalten in diesem Diskussionsforum. KMM behält sich insbesondere vor, gegen geltendes Recht verstoßende, den guten Sitten oder der Netiquette widersprechende bzw. dem Ansehen von KMM zuwiderlaufende Beiträge zu löschen, diesbezüglichen Schadenersatz gegenüber dem betreffenden User geltend zu machen, die Nutzer-Daten zu Zwecken der Rechtsverfolgung zu verwenden und strafrechtlich relevante Beiträge zur Anzeige zu bringen (siehe auch AGB). Hier können Sie das Community-Team via unserer Melde- und Abhilfestelle kontaktieren.