Santander has been in touch to say it will be changing the opening hours of its Brentwood High Street branch in July. From Monday 18 July, the branch will be open from 9.30am to 3.00pm on weekdays, and Saturday opening hours will be reduced to 9.30am to 12.30pm.
Santander have provide the following information about the changed opening hours:
"There will be no branch closures as part of these changes. This announcement follows a comprehensive internal review, taking into consideration the changing nature of the way in which our customers bank with us and how they use our branches.
We have seen over recent years, that as well as using our branches, many more of our customers find it convenient to do their day-to-day banking online, through Mobile or Telephone Banking. As a result, customers are visiting our branches much less, with branch transactions falling by 33% in the two years before the pandemic, by 20% in 2020, and by 12% in 2021.
By making these adjustments to our branch opening hours, this will allow branch colleagues to help more customers on the phone, where demand is now extremely high. Not only will this enable us to serve our customers more effectively, but it will also provide significant new opportunities for branch colleagues, who will receive additional training to help them support customers over the phone, as well as in branch. There will also be no redundancies as a result of these changes.
If customers require support that we cannot provide using Mobile, Online or Telephone Banking or during our branch opening hours, we will work with them to understand the best way that we can help. Where necessary we will be able to arrange a branch appointment in line with our previous branch opening hours for those customers."
