Big banks have no soul.
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They are unrelenting and unflinching in their pursuit of profit.
Despite the carefully airbrushed ad campaigns, replete with smiling families and sentimental slogans, our banks are slaves to the bottom line.
They are, in fact, the most profitable banks in the world, with their profits accounting for a staggering 2.9 per cent of Australia’s GDP.
That means 2.9 per cent of every $100 earned in Australia ends up as bank pre-tax profit.
We should hardly be surprised they are refusing to pass on interest rate cuts, slugging us obscene amounts to access our own money and abandoning country towns at a record rate. But we should be angry.
Because while banks are a business, they are also a necessity.
As such, they should be subjected to fierce scrutiny by authorities.
Their pervasive lobbying power means subsequent governments have failed to rein them in.
And we’re left paying the price.
In recent weeks, the inexorable tide of branch closures has been felt in the Riverina, with ANZ pulling the rug out from under the Junee community and St George flagging a branch closure in Leeton.
We are in the midst of the biggest spate of bush bank closures in 20 years.
Two decades ago, banks were furiously closing branches in the bush, opting instead to open agencies inside other businesses.
Now, those agencies are closing.
The end game is painfully clear – big banks will retreat entirely from towns.
They claim these closures don’t affect customers, who are increasingly using EFTPOS, online and mobile banking.
But the sense of loss – lost jobs, inconvenience for businesses and older customers – is conveniently ignored.
So too is the impersonal nature of the new services, the time spent waiting to get through to call centres and the irritating limitations of internet connectivity in the bush.
The inevitability of change doesn’t mean we shouldn’t acknowledge the pain and loss involved in the transition, nor the social responsibility the big banks are ignoring.
An editorial in a Wagga newspaper won’t change their treatment of us. But if enough customers reach a tipping point, and direct their anger at their local MP, then maybe we’ll finally force a Royal Commission.