Open Banking for Good – making a difference during the pandemic

Posted on 29 March 202129 March 2021 by david.collings

By Sharon Collard and Jamie Evans

Nationwide Building Society’s Open Banking for Good (OB4G) – an initiative to use Open Banking technology to help ‘financially squeezed‘ people – ran from 2018 to early 2020. With around 4 million UK households currently struggling to manage financially, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the value of these propositions as well as presenting opportunities and challenges for the fintech Challengers in terms of their ability to grow and scale.

Open Banking for Good (OB4G) was launched by Nationwide Building Society in 2018 and ran throughout 2019 into early 2020. It brought together user experts (charity partners), solution experts (fintech Challengers) and process experts (Nationwide’s OB4G team) to solve real-life financial challenges for people who are ‘financially squeezed’.

Our newly-published evaluation of the impact of the OB4G programme shows that it largely met the expectations of the five fintech Challengers that completed it, by creating time and space for innovation though collaborative learning with user experts. As a result, all five Challengers successfully developed and tested propositions that tackle real problems which were grounded in the experience of people who are ‘financially squeezed’.

The COVID-19 pandemic took hold in March 2020, just as the OB4G programme was wrapping up. The economic and social impact of the pandemic has fallen especially heavily on OB4G’s target audience with an estimated 4 million people currently struggling to manage. While the pandemic brought home the potential value of the propositions that were developed in the OB4G programme, it also impacted the OB4G Challengers in a range of different ways:

Income smoothing challenge: Trezeo brought forward the development of its sickness insurance for independent workers and gave existing members complementary cover from early March to the end of June 2020. The pandemic also meant it had to delay its next funding round and put on hold its partnership with an online employment platform.
Income and expenditure challenge: Both Ducit.ai and OpenWrks saw increased demand for their Income & Expenditure propositions as the pandemic led to large-scale drops in earnings and people turned to creditors for forbearance and support. OpenWrks also created a payment relief solution that enabled lenders to offer an automated online channel for customers to apply for mortgage and consumer credit payment deferrals.
Money management & help challenge: The first national lockdown in March 2020 – when 2.5 million people were advised to stay at home or ‘shield’ – highlighted the value of Touco’s ideas for using tech to provide a safe way for individuals to give money to a helper to spend on their behalf. The pandemic also created significant challenges for Touco’s planned user testing of the new version of its app. The major changes to people’s spending patterns also had implications for how people interacted with Tully’s Money Coaching app, and in particular the spending challenges they might set.

Nationwide asked us to evaluate the programme so that they could learn and improve the current Nationwide Incubator which is focussed on addressing the challenges of living in financial difficulty. Our evaluation of the OB4G programme is also important as it helps build a new evidence base around the potential of technology and innovation to ‘move the dial’ on big social issues. This knowledge sharing has become even more important in the wake of COVID-19, which brings opportunities to use a Grounded Innovation approach to ‘build back better’ and improve the UK’s financial wellbeing.

Read our report: Open Banking for Good: Making a difference?

Introducing Katie Cross, PFRC’s new Research Associate

Posted on 11 June 202011 June 2020 by david.collings

Katie Cross

By Katie Cross

When I applied for a job at the University of Bristol’s Personal Finance Research Centre (PFRC) three months ago, I never expected my first week would be spent working from the comfort of my own home. No commute, no struggling to navigate my way around campus and no face-to-face introductions with colleagues. Instead I find myself writing this blog as a way of introducing myself to everyone at the University and to those within the wider research community.

So hello, I am Katie the new Research Associate at the PFRC. My background is in quantitative, policy-focused research, most recently working for the Association of Convenience Stores, a trade association that lobbies government on behalf of small shops. The best thing about working in an applied social research setting is that your research can have a direct impact; the intention is that the findings you produce will be used to inform and drive change. This was just one of the reasons I was drawn to working for the PFRC.

Moving into personal finance and being able to work at the University is an extremely exciting opportunity, which will bring with it a whole host of new experiences. But researching small shops has more in common with personal finance than you might think.

Access to cash

Firstly, during my time at ACS I saw how many people were dependent on the financial services that local shops offer, including post offices, cash machines and bill payment terminals. From a business perspective it is important that offering these services remains viable, as retailers can end up operating them at a loss, replacing ATMs with pay-to-use models or removing them all together. From a personal finance perspective, the removal of these services can be detrimental, especially to the most vulnerable. Almost half of the UK population (47%) believe it would be personally problematic if there was no cash in society and 17% (over 8 million adults) would struggle to cope without it. These figures were reported prior to the coronavirus outbreak, which will only have brought this into the spotlight even further. With hygiene concerns around the use of cash, an increase in the contactless card payment limit and more shops only accepting card, it is now even more important that we do not leave those who rely on cash behind. This makes the work that the PFRC and Dr Daniel Tischer are doing with the Financial Conduct Authority, Payment Systems Regulator and various industry stakeholders on mapping access to cash across the country even more valuable.

Helping people in vulnerable situations

Secondly, helping people in vulnerable situations is a top priority for the PFRC, and the same is often true of local shops. I was always impressed by how much local shops do for their communities, whether this is through delivery services for the elderly, training staff to become dementia friends, or just being there for people who don’t have anyone else to talk to. This has become more apparent during this unprecedented period, with shops going even further to get vulnerable customers the help they need. With Coronavirus pushing many more into vulnerable situations, this is now more important than ever. If the virus has taught us anything, it is that our lives and personal circumstances can change quickly, and sometimes with very little warning.

It is with that in mind that I start my new role.

I am really looking forward to working within the area of personal finance, especially at a time of such great economic uncertainty when we need this research more than ever. I can’t wait to use my past experience and research abilities to help inform all areas of personal finance and help drive change for those who need it.

Mind the (data) gap: we need national statistics on people’s banking experiences

Posted on 1 June 20201 June 2020 by david.collings

By Sharon Collard

Since lockdown, millions of UK adults are reported to have switched to mobile banking as banks close branches or restrict their opening hours and struggle to cope with high call volumes. However, we seriously lack data on how people are coping with banking – both offline and online. From a policy and advocacy perspective, these important data gaps need urgent attention, especially as the UK’s ‘new normal’ will almost certainly mean ‘online’.

The UK has pretty good data on people’s internet access and – by extension – their capacity to bank online. This also tells us who the banks are leaving behind in their digital transformation programmes, which have been given an extra boost by COVID-19.

According to Ofcom, while 90% of the UK adult population used the internet in 2018, this falls to 67% among people with a disability. The gap in smartphone use is even bigger, with 78% of UK adults saying they personally use a smartphone compared with just 45% of adults with a disability.

ONS data shows that women and people aged 65+ are also less likely to use the internet. And, while 69% of adults bank online (rising to a whopping 93% of 25-34 year olds), this falls to 47% of 65-74 year olds and 23% of 75-79 year olds – although there are reports of growing numbers of older people registering for online banking since lockdown.

The two most common reasons people gave (pre-COVID) for not using the internet were lack of interest and lack of digital skills. Lloyds Bank estimates that nine million people are unable to use the internet or their devices without assistance; and 6.5 million cannot open apps (which presumably includes banking apps). CapGemini highlights cost as an important reason for ‘digital disconnection’ among young people.

This begs the question: how are non-internet users and others who find digital difficult – including consumers in vulnerable situations who physically can’t get to a bank – coping with banking in lockdown? Despite interesting innovation, the worry is that people resort to risky workarounds like sharing their PIN number or bank cards, exposing them to the threat of financial abuse.

There is some excellent ‘lived experience’ data as well as a whole range of new COVID-19 studies looking at its impact on every aspect of people’s lives – including the financial impact. However, none of these seems to shed much light on how people are coping with ‘offline banking’.

It is also hard to find any publicly available data on people’s experience of online banking. The most recent waves of the Financial Capability Survey of UK Adults and Financial Lives Survey (both fantastic data sources) don’t cover online banking in any detail – although future waves may do – and they are biennial. In the meantime, while banks have their own data and can pay for other data, these data are not freely or publicly available.

From a policy and advocacy perspective, these data gaps need urgent attention, especially as the UK’s ‘new normal’ will almost certainly mean ‘online’.

Identifying vulnerable communities at risk of being left behind in a cash-lite society

Posted on 17 February 2020 by jamie.evans

By Daniel Tischer, Sara Davies & Jamie Evans

These days it’s common to hear discussion of the UK being on the verge of becoming a ‘cashless’ society – but, for a range of reasons, this may be premature. For the foreseeable future, a more appropriate term may be ‘cash-lite’. In this blog, Dr Daniel Tischer reflects on our research in South Wales in which we explore a new method for identifying and protecting the most vulnerable communities in a ‘cash-lite’ society.

Much recent commentary suggests that the UK, and a number of other countries, are rapidly moving towards becoming ‘cashless’ societies – but there remain multiple hurdles standing in the way of ‘cashlessness’. One such hurdle is that digital payments do not yet quite match cash for reliability: technical ‘glitches’ too often stop us from paying digitally. The (partial) outage of the VISA network in June 2018, for example, left many Europeans unable to pay by card, and other, smaller-scale incidents are not infrequent either. There are also big hurdles related to consumer needs and preferences, or the unsuitability of digital in certain circumstances (for example, in areas with no / a poor internet connection).

This leads to the conclusion that, in the near future at least, the UK will not become cashless. Rather it seems we are becoming a ‘cash-lite’ society – one in which cash usage is forecasted to decrease to about 1 in 10 transactions by 2028 – mirroring the experience of other low-cash countries, such as Sweden and Canada.

Vulnerability & the poverty premium in a cash-lite society

So what does a cash-lite society mean for consumers? Well for most people, most of the time, there will be few problems – but that does not mean that there are not significant risks that need to be mitigated. As fewer transactions are made in cash, more ATMs will be closed down or switched from free to fee-charging – and, as we saw both in our case study of Bristol’s cash network published in May last year and in national research from Which? in September, the latter of these is an issue which disproportionately affects more deprived areas.

Paying to access cash was a component of the University of Bristol’s ‘poverty premium’ calculations in 2016, albeit a relatively small one, and this suggests that vulnerable communities may be left even further behind. Even a small charge of £1 per transaction present a significant cost to low-income households, especially when only small sums—£10 or £20—are taken out to purchase basic food items or pay bills.

Identifying and supporting potentially vulnerable communities

As our society becomes more cash-lite, there is a danger of increasingly uneven access to cash across the country. This makes it important that we are able to map and identify those areas that are not only losing their ability to access cash but are also less resilient to such changes taking place.

Our second report on access to cash, published in January 2020, therefore advances our methodology from our Bristol case study to identify communities in South Wales that are most ‘vulnerable’ in terms of access to cash. We identify vulnerability in two steps: 1) by considering their current ability to access cash – where AvCash Index scores under 5 highlight communities with a low number of ATMs or other cash infrastructure within a 1km radius; and 2) by taking into account communities’ ability to cope without such access. The latter involves the construction of a measure of travel difficulty, indicating that a high proportion of residents in an area may find it difficult to travel far to access cash (or other essential services, for that matter). This measure incorporates: levels of car ownership, disability, age, income and access to public transport (in the form of nearby bus stops).

Looking at communities with poor access to cash and a high proportion of residents who may struggle to travel to access their money, provides us with a clearer idea of where poor cash infrastructures may have the highest negative impact. While this of course does not mean that there will not be individuals in other areas for whom access to cash is a problem, it does offer a useful tool for the industry to prioritise need – for example, when evaluating communities’ requests for a new ATM or identifying which ATMs to protect through additional subsidies. Indeed, as shown in the map below, there are many vulnerable areas without protected ATMs which may benefit from them:

Map of vulnerable areas & protected ATMs

Overall, we find that over a quarter (27 per cent) of neighbourhoods in our case study fall within the 20 per cent worst areas nationally for travel difficulty and have an AvCash Index score of less than 10. Similarly, 8 per cent of areas score poorly for travel difficulty and have no free ATM, while a further 12 per cent of areas have just one free ATM and high travel difficulty. These neighbourhoods are not solely rural; many are located on the outskirts of towns. Taken together, we find that over 100,000 people in this region (out of approximately 500,000) live in vulnerable neighbourhoods and do not currently benefit from a protected ATM.

Our geographical mapping approach therefore presents a potentially valuable tool to identify vulnerability by taking a community-based perspective. It raises further questions about the sustainability of the UK cash infrastructure and the ability of LINK and regulators to reign in private and profit-driven actions by providers of access to cash.

But crucially, we believe that our approach provides policy-makers and regulators with additional insights into the impact current changes have on the most vulnerable communities, and to better understand what vulnerability means in particular contexts. We are hoping to work closely with stakeholders to map access to cash nationally to inform policies towards ensuring cash is available for free to those for rely on it.

Read the full report here:

Report: ‘Geographies of Access to Cash: Identifying vulnerable communities in a case study of South Wales.’

Making a difference in FinTech? Evaluating the impact of Nationwide’s Open Banking for Good programme

Posted on 4 February 2020 by jamie.evans

By Sharon Collard & Jamie Evans

Nowadays, fintech startups often emerge with the ambition of ‘doing good’ and changing society for the better. This surely is to be welcomed – but what is the best way of ensuring it actually makes a positive difference to consumers? In this blog, we attempt to answer this question, outlining the first stage in our evaluation of Nationwide’s Open Banking for Good (OB4G) programme.

As its name suggests, OB4G was set-up with the ambition of being ‘for good’. Launched by Nationwide in 2018, it is a £3 million programme which aims to leverage Open Banking technology to create and scale new apps and services, all of which are designed to help the 12.7 million adults in the UK who are ‘financially squeezed’. The ambition to support this group of consumers – who tend to have high debt-to-income ratios, coupled with low savings – is clearly a positive one, but how can those designing innovation programmes turn this ambition into reality?

That is the question Nationwide has asked us to explore through an independent evaluation of the OB4G programme. We have already published a report outlining the lessons from the ideation and implementation of OB4G, and we share below three key lessons that we believe can inform the design of future ‘fintech for good’ efforts. We continue to support the successful OB4G fintechs (who we call Challengers) in measuring the financial and social impacts of their Open Banking-enabled products and services on end-users throughout, with a final report scheduled for Q2 2020.

Lesson #1: Problems looking for solutions, not solutions looking for problems

One of the early lessons of the programme is the importance of identifying real-world problems that might benefit from tech solutions – rather than retrospectively finding a socially useful purpose for an existing product or service.

To do this, the OB4G team at Nationwide involved charity partners from the very beginning to identify the real-life challenges facing people who are ‘financially squeezed’ that the programme could tackle. These charity partners – including Citizens Advice, Christians Against Poverty, the Money Advice Trust, the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute, and The Money Charity – have great insights into the needs of people living on a financial knife-edge, and so were well-placed to identify the issues facing consumers and help shape the programme. In the words of one challenger, this helped overcome the risk of ‘hipsters designing for hipsters’!

Lesson #2: Locking the ‘innovation cage’

Together, the charity partners and Nationwide’s OB4G team identified three pressing challenges for the OB4G programme to tackle:

Income Smoothing – helping the growing number of people who have irregular or unpredictable income to manage their regular outgoings
Income & Expenditure – making it easier for someone to produce an accurate statement of their income and expenditure
Money Management & Help – helping people to practice and maintain good money habits

In our qualitative interviews with OB4G Challengers, they emphasised the value of having well-defined real-life problems to solve, which kept them tightly focused on doing one thing well for a particular consumer segment. This was described by one as an ‘innovation cage’ that allows creative freedom and innovation but in a way that keeps the social purpose of OB4G front and centre.

Importantly, the startups were not alone in their ‘innovation cage’! They were partnered with a charity (or in some cases more than one charity), which could contribute its knowledge and insight about the target audience throughout the development process. This element of ‘co-creation’ was almost as valuable to the Challengers as funding.

Lesson #3: The challenge of different ways of working

Our evaluation not only sheds light on what works, but also on challenges that innovation programmes like OB4G invariably encounter. One such issue was the very different ways in which startups and established organisations work – whether charities or a large commercial organisation like Nationwide.

While ‘agile’ working is part and parcel of fintech startup culture, for charities – whose focus is often on fire-fighting and delivering their core purpose – this can be harder to achieve. The same is true for large commercial organisations, where there may be many layers of bureaucracy to navigate in order to get things done. So while the startups hugely valued the insight and support they got from OB4G, there were times when things didn’t move quite as quickly as they would have liked.

The key lesson for fintechs and innovation programme designers is that, yes, it is hugely beneficial to work with charities and people with lived experience to co-design products and services. BUT you need to build in sufficient time (and understanding) to make this happen. Our evidence also indicates that programmes should routinely offer to fund Charity Partners for their contribution (even if Charity Partners aren’t always able to accept such funding).

What next?

So far, our evaluation has focused on the process of setting up and running the OB4G programme. We are now considering the impact that OB4G actually has on consumers. As such, we are working with the five remaining Challengers – Ducit, Openwrks, Toucan, Trezeo and Tully – to measure the effect of their products on consumers’ financial wellbeing. Our aim is to make a useful contribution to a growing body of evidence around how fintech startups can actually ‘do good’ and make a difference to the lives of their users.

Read the first stage of our evaluation here:

Report: ‘Open Banking for Good: Moving the Dial?’

Gamble Aware announce new partnership with University of Bristol to explore potential role of financial services firms in reducing gambling-related harm

Posted on 26 September 201926 September 2019 by david.collings

The University of Bristol’s Personal Finance Research Centre (PFRC) is today pleased to announce the launch of Money and Gambling: Practice, Insight, Evidence (MAGPIE), a new three-year strategic programme, in partnership with Gamble Aware, which looks at the role that financial services organisations can play in reducing gambling-related harm.

Gambling problems can destroy lives, often leaving those affected to live with severe financial and social consequences. Indeed, around seven in ten people seeking help for gambling problems report that they are in debt, with a third of these owing £10,000 or more. Between 2007 and 2014 there were an average of 500 bankruptcies per year known to be linked to gambling – the true figure, however, may be much higher because people may not disclose that their bankruptcy is related to gambling.[1]

While many people do enjoy gambling safely, the number of people who are ‘problem gamblers’ or who suffer negative consequences as a result of their gambling is far from insignificant. It is estimated that in 2016 nearly a million adults in Britain experienced sizeable negative consequences as a result of their gambling, with around 360,000 adults classified as ‘problem gamblers’ (Gambling Commission, 2019).

Betting on the banks?

Money and gambling are clearly intricately linked, with ‘gambling more than you can afford’ one of the key indicators of a gambling problem. As such, it makes sense that organisations that help us look after our money – the world of ‘financial services’ – might also be able to take actions to help those at-risk of gambling-related harm.

Such firms are regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which in recent years has upped its focus on the way that companies treat customers in vulnerable situations – including those living with gambling problems. As a result, firms are paying increased attention to the way that they identify and support such customers.

Indeed, in 2016, PFRC conducted research with over 1,500 frontline debt collection staff working in a wide range of financial services firms, including high-street banks, lenders and debt collection agencies. This research focused on staff members’ experiences of working with customers in vulnerable situations, including those with mental health problems, suicidal thoughts and addictions, and highlighted some of the challenges that they face – whether in identifying ‘vulnerability’, starting a conversation about it, or providing customers with adequate support or sign-posting to other sources of support.

Following that research, we held a number of ‘problem-solving workshops’ with firms, charities and those with lived experience of different vulnerable situations to develop new tools and guidance for debt collection staff when working with such customers. Many of the solutions developed have now been adopted (or, in some cases, even adapted) by firms – highlighting the fact that there is considerable appetite among those working in financial services to do what they can to help such customers.

When the funds stop, stop?

Last year saw the introduction of spending controls or ‘gambling blocks’ by several UK banks – most notably Barclays, Monzo and Starling. Once turned on by customers, these essentially prevent spending on a bank card at gambling outlets (both online or in-person).

We know that people in recovery from problem gambling already use informal workarounds to prevent themselves from spending money on gambling, such as forfeiting their card to a third party or scratching off the card security number. The new solutions from banks, however, allow customers to do this more formally – and, possibly, more successfully.

But at present there is limited evidence about the effectiveness of such spending controls, nor about the characteristics of those who use them. We also don’t know much about the unintended consequences of these spending blockers (for example, whether it leads to customers withdrawing more money as cash and gambling with that).

As such, the first six months of our programme will focus on answering these questions and building the evidence-base around what works for recovering gamblers. We will use this evidence to produce practical guidance for financial services firms around the design of spending blockers.

Get involved in the research

In order to build the evidence-base, we’ll be working closely throughout the project with financial services firms – but, more importantly, our research will place those with lived experience of problem gambling at the centre of the project, as well as those with expertise in the treatment of recovering gamblers.

So, if you’re interested in being part of the research or if you simply want to be kept updated, you can join our money and gambling network by filling out this short form.

Notes:

GambleAware is an independent charity that champions a public health approach to preventing gambling harms. The charity is a commissioner of integrated prevention, education and treatment services on a national scale, with over £40 million of grant funding under active management. In partnership with gambling treatment providers, GambleAware has spent several years methodically building structures for commissioning a coherent system of brief intervention and treatment services, with clearly defined care pathways and established referral routes to and from the NHS – a National Gambling Treatment Service. Follow GambleAware on Twitter: @GambleAware

GambleAware also runs the website BeGambleAware.org which helps 4.2 million visitors a year and signposts to a wide range of support services. Follow BeGambleAware on Twitter: @BeGambleAware

[1] See RGSB (2015) Understanding gambling-related harm and debt. Available at: https://www.rgsb.org.uk/PDF/Understanding-gambling-related-harm-and-debt-July-2015.pdf

This article was originally posted on the MAGPIE blog. Read the original article here.

Older and poorer communities are left behind by the decline of cash

Posted on 16 May 201926 September 2019 by david.collings

by Daniel Tischer, University of Bristol; Jamie Evans, University of Bristol, and Sara Davies, University of Bristol

An increasingly rare sight.
ShutterStockStudio / Shutterstock.com

A future without cash seems almost inevitable. Recent statistics paint a damning picture: while cash accounted for 62% of all payments by volume in 2006, this dropped to 40% in just a decade and is predicted to fall yet further to 21% by 2026.

Digital payments, on the other hand, are trending strongly in the opposite direction. Contactless payments in December 2018 in the UK were 28% higher than the same month in the previous year (at 691m in total), while the total number of card transactions increased by 12% over the same period.

In the long term, such a shift may well have benefits for many, given the speed and convenience that digital payments offer. But in the meantime, in the next five to ten years or so, there remain lots of people still dependent on cash – particularly those who are older or from lower income households. These people, it seems, are at risk of being forgotten if current trends continue. Ironically, those who are least likely to need cash have the best access to it.

Cash still king for many

We know there is still a sizeable proportion of the UK population that continues to depend on cash. An estimated 2.2m people report that they only use cash, while there are as many as 1.3m people who are “unbanked” (do not have a current account).

In our research, we regularly encounter people who find it difficult to access mainstream banking products, do not use digital payments because they find it easier to manage their money in cash, and/or simply lack trust in digital banking. For these people, cash very much continues to be king.

This means it’s important to understand the way in which access to cash is changing for the UK population. But much of the debate so far has focused on the overall number of ATMs or bank branches in the UK, without much understanding of the importance of geography. Where these dwindling number of ATMs are located makes a big difference.

Indeed, when this was studied in the early 2000s, we learnt that bank branch closures and fee-charging ATMs were more often found in poorer parts of the country. The issue was then seemingly remedied by measures such as the “Financial Inclusion Programme” put in place by LINK, the UK’s main ATM network. This programme incentivised ATM operators to provide cash machines in lower income neighbourhoods.

More and more people are relying on post offices for cash.
Michael J P / Shutterstock.com

In our new research, we therefore sought to reexamine the geography of cash provision, using Bristol as a case study. Through detailed mapping of the city’s cash infrastructure, we found stark differences in access to cash between different types of neighbourhood. Sites of economic activity, perhaps unsurprisingly, are well served; as were some of the most deprived, relatively central, neighbourhoods.

But we also found that areas we classify as “squeezed suburbs” – relatively deprived areas on the fringes of the city – were poorly catered for. This represents a significant challenge for some of the older and less well-off residents in these areas, who are most likely to depend on cash. We found Post Offices, which offer cash withdrawals and some banking services, are often geographically best-placed to serve these communities and could be a crucial asset moving forward, at least if used correctly.

Deprived areas worse off

There are signs that the situation is now changing again. Recent research revealed that around 1,700 ATMs nationwide changed from free to fee-charging at the start of 2019, likely the result of lower overall demand for cash and a recent drop in the interchange fees paid by banks when someone withdraws cash from another company’s ATM.

This was also noticeable in our research, as we gathered data both in October 2018 and March 2019. Importantly, we found that such changes were happening more often in deprived areas. Over two-thirds of the ATMs that became fee-charging in Bristol over this time period were within particularly deprived neighbourhoods.

This seems to be because ATM infrastructure in more deprived areas tends to be non-bank owned. Comparing a relatively affluent part of the city (Whiteladies Road in the Clifton neighbourhood) with a more deprived area (Stapleton Road in the Easton neighbourhood), we noticed that while just 29% of ATMs in Whiteladies Road are non-bank owned, this rises to 89% in Stapleton Road. Some such non-bank ATM owners have publicly stated that they will convert more free ATMs to fee-charging ATMs following the recent reduction in interchange fees.

This could have far-reaching implications for already under-served communities. So, while a future without cash may be almost inevitable, if the patterns found in Bristol are replicated nationally, it is likely that we’ll see a return to old geographies of financial exclusion, with deprived communities struggling most on the journey there.

Daniel Tischer, Lecturer in Management, University of Bristol; Jamie Evans, Senior Research Associate, University of Bristol, and Sara Davies, Senior Research Fellow, University of Bristol

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Category: Banking and financial services