Journalist Dale Webster over at The Regional has rightly launched an attack on APRA, the banking regulator.
https://www.theregional.com.au/post/apra-bogged-in-a-data-mess-of-its-own-making
They released their annual points of presence data that showed an 11 per cent fall in bank branches nationally in 12 months. It triggered HEADLINES around Australia last week screamed out about bank closures. Channel Nine was one of many media outlets that picked up the story, reporting 424 branches had “shut their doors for the final time”.
As Dale writes, the problem is APRA never actually said that.
“The latest statistics show a further decline in bank branches in the year to 30 June 2023, with a reduction of 424 branches across Australia (11 per cent), including 122 branches (7 per cent) in regional and remote areas. This continues a trend that has seen branch numbers decline by 34 per cent in regional and remote areas, and 37 per cent overall, since the end of June 2017.”
What unsuspecting media did not pick up on was that among those 424 branches were a number of sites that had been stripped of branch status because they no longer provided the level of service required to be classified as such by law.
The doors are still very much open but they are among the growing number of banks that have no tellers and customers can only get cash from an ATM.
So we are left with what could be described as a bit of a situation, according to Dale. I think it is more deliberate, as APRA again manages to hide the real story – on this they have form, given their close alignment to the Banks. They are in my view hardly independent, nor an effective regulator.
