“All Gone Now”: The Material, Discursive and Political Erasure of Bank and Building Society Branches in Britain

Abstract

This paper examines an apparent anomaly that lies at the heart of processes of financial exclusion within Britain. Given that the branch networks of banks and building societies have shrunk in size by about one‐third since 1989, a period during which the Government has launched a wide‐ranging set of policies to tackle financial exclusion, why is it that the issue of branch closure has been neutralised as a political issue? After providing evidence to show the extent of branch closure in Britain and illustrating the ways in which geographical research in particular has drawn attention to the nature of this problem, we look at the way the issue of physical access to financial services has been discursively and politically marginalised. We undertake a detailed history of public policy in the area, and the ways in which research funded by industry bodies and Government departments has been used and framed to build a pro‐market, neoliberal policy programme that constructs branch closures as natural and inevitable.

Financializing space, spacing financialization

“…Within such a formulation, the financial ecology of the middle class suburb can be seen as one of relative privilege, with deep and close connections to the financial system (French et al 2008). Both savings and debt payments emanating to and from such ecologies are now constituent of the successful reproduction of the global financial system, whose networks have extended to incorporate them (cf.…”

“…They may live in a cash economy, use traditional sub-prime financial services or -in the UK at least -use regulated but limited financial products such as basic bank accounts. These different kinds of financial citizen are clearly associated with different kinds of financial ecology, and the way in which they are constitutive of one another requires urgent investigation (French et al 2008). …”

Financial advisors, financial ecologies and the variegated financialisation of everyday investors

“…This concept is more recently employed in geographical research on retail financial services and financial exclusion to demonstrate the importance of physical access to financial services on the variegated assemblage of social and financial networks within different places (Appleyard ; Coppock ; French et al . ; Leyshon et al . ).…”

“…The uneven processes and impacts of financial practices and consumption have been examined through a ‘financial ecologies’ approach that recasts the financial system as a coalition of smaller constitutive ecologies, such that distinctive groupings of financial knowledge and practices emerge in different places with uneven connectivity and material outcomes (Coppock ; French et al . ; Leyshon et al . ).…”

Speculating on Careless Lives

“…It is, such accounts contend, the responsible and hardworking citizenconsumers of 'middle England' who are being unfairly penalised for the failings of the irresponsible and intemperate other by annuity enhancement. In particular, the application of geodemographic data to the pricing of pension annuities has, it is argued, ushered in a form of 'pensions postcode lottery', one which turns the usual debate about financial exclusion on its head (compare French et al 2008). For the concern here is not with the existence of a 'poverty premium', but rather, given the strong correlation between wealth and life expectancy, the 'unfair' discrimination against retirees who live in prosperous postcodes (see, for example, Harper 2010).…”