A fifth of Northern Irish businesses have to travel 45 minutes each way to the local bank

New research from BusinessComparison has surveyed UK SME leaders on local banks, finding that some areas, including Northern Ireland, have limited access to banking services.

The research investigated how long it takes business leaders to go to the bank, whether they are collecting change, seeking financial advice or making a deposit. They found that, in Northern Ireland, the percentage of businesses whose journey to the bank takes 45 minutes to an hour is three times the national average. Across the UK, the whole of the UK this figure is only 7% - but in Northern Ireland, it’s 21%.

Given that 18% of Northern Irish respondents also said they run out of change to give to customers at least once a week, it’s easy to see why long distances to reach the local bank branch could frequently cause difficulties. That would leave the company’s team down by one staff member for at least an hour and a half every week.

Across the whole of the UK, only 12% of business leaders said they were not worried about bank closures in their area. 50% said they were concerned about businesses that take cash payments, and 34% were worried about the impact on customers. 74% of UK SME leaders said they had noticed there were fewer nearby banks than there had been 10 years ago. In Northern Ireland, this percentage rose slightly to 79%.

In one interesting discovery from the survey, younger business leaders were more likely to make in-person visits to the bank. 45% of businesses run by 25 to 34-year-olds and 36% of those run by 35 to 44-year-olds send a staff member to the bank several times a week. Only 15% of businesses run by 55 to 64-year-olds go this often. Gen Z business owners aged 18-24 are the most likely to go to the bank several times a week at 51%.

Philip Brennan, Founder and MD at BusinessComparison, comments:

“We were interested in finding out how leaders at SMEs feel about their access to local banks. The fact that three-quarters of the people we surveyed said they’ve noticed fewer branches confirms a pattern that has been going on anecdotally for some time.

“It was heartening to see how much of a sense of business community emerged from the survey results. For 88% of business leaders, the main concern when it came to bank closures was the impact on the local area, including other businesses.”

Owners and decision makers at SMEs clearly value their local banks and are concerned that they are disappearing - both for their own sake and for the sake of others who use local bank branches, the other businesses in the local ecosystem as well as their customers.