Scottish Affairs Committee
8 July 2026
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Scottish Affairs Committee House of Commons
00:02 - 00:42
Order, order. Good morning and welcome to Scottish Affairs Committee meeting. We are conducting an inquiry at the moment into the future of Scotland's high streets, and we're very interested to see how banking and access to cash affects high streets and affects those who use them, either as consumers or as traders. So, very much welcome Mr. Leenders this morning. Thank you for coming along.
I'll ask you my first question, which is, do you think high street banks still have a role to play in a world where obviously digital banking is becoming much more common?
00:42 - 01:43
Eric Leenders
Managing Director (Personal Finance), UK Finance
Yes, so I think I could answer that question in two parts. The first is yes, there is a role and actually we've seen a number of branches, sorry, a number of brands commit to branches on high streets over the course of the last 12, 18 months or so. But equally, I think from a wider societal point, we have to recognize the way that we shop, the way that we live our lives in a more digitized society has changed, and we see that in banking as well. So where previously, back in the day as a former bank manager myself, you kind of had an end-to-end service within a bank branch, now we just, that's just not the experience and customers very much want to be able to swap between channels, so maybe start in a branch, migrate to telephony, perhaps do some research online, etc. And it's that fluidity which is reflected in the pattern of banking and that's reflecting in turn in the resizing of branch networks across the UK.
01:43 - 02:11
We know that Nationwide, for example, have said they won't close any branches until 2030. Is, does, do those decisions vary from bank to bank, or does it reflect a sort of policy decision, or is it simply about their trading situation, or is it less profitable for some and not for others? Is there a sort of rationale behind who makes what decision?
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