Small Businesses: Productivity

(asked on 16th January 2018) - View Source

Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment his Department has made of the relationship between the productivity of small and medium sized enterprises and access to physical banking services.


Answered by
John Glen Portrait
John Glen
Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office
This question was answered on 24th January 2018

The Treasury has no made no such assessments. The decision to open and close branches remains a commercial judgement for banks. However, the impact of closures on communities must be understood, considered and mitigated where possible.

The industry’s Access to Banking Standard, launched in May 2017, commits banks to ensure personal and business customers are better informed about branch closures and the reasons for them closing, along with the options they have locally to continue to access banking services, including specialist assistance for customers who need more help. The Access to Banking Standard is monitored and enforced by the independent Lending Standards Board.

99% of personal and 95% of banks’ business customers are now able to withdraw cash, deposit cash and cheques, and make balance enquiries at a Post Office counter via its network of 11,600 branches. At Autumn Budget 2017, my predecessor wrote to the Post Office and UK Finance to ask them to raise public awareness of the banking services available at the Post Office for individuals and SMEs. I look forward to receiving their proposals later this month.

More widely, the Government remains committed to supporting SMEs’ access to the finance they need to grow and expand, and has: established the British Business Bank to make finance markets work better for small businesses; supported challenger banks; introduced a bespoke regime for peer-to-peer lending; and made structural interventions such as the Bank Referral Scheme and the SME credit data sharing scheme.

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