In-person banking soon to be a rarity, CIBC CEO says, as customers continue to migrate online | General financial discussion | Discussion forum

Pffft. It's obviously been a while since he's been in a branch. They're still busy.
Avoid the beginning or the end of the month or any Friday.

Lots of seniors, lots of small biz people, lots of new immigrants. The list goes on.

Now, if he could find a way to do away with paper cheques and their processing, he might actually be on to something.

It's probably tied to cash, if we truly go cashless then greatly reduced need for branches. I'm guessing the CEO of CIBC has the data to know what he's talking about.

Cashless Bank Branches in Canada

It is true. I visited a CIBC branch since a long time & noticed it has become a tellerless/cashless branch. I later goggled the CIBC locations around me, it is tagged as "Cash at ATM only". Alarmingly, of the four in my vicinity, three now are "Cash at ATM only"

Laurentian Bank has gone further and ended teller service in most branches in July 2019. Teller service ended in the remaining branches by September 2019.

My two sons in managerial positions at big 5 bank branches have seen continual reductions in CSRs (tellers) and branches over the past decade. They expect the trend to continue and hope they can last another ~10 years to early retirement before being downsized. One big hope they have is to cease cash transactions as discussed above, and seniors paying their damned utility bills at the branches. It is mind numbing non-profitable transactional activity.

With the Internet, branches don't matter as much as they did decades ago.

Back then, how would one deposit one's paycheque or cash it? One had to take it to a bank branch. People opened an account at whichever bank or trust company had a branch nearby.

Most depositors who had a sizeable sum, like $80,000, would leave it in an account with that lucky branch. Not like there was an EQ Bank back then the high roller could initiate a "pull" from and get a better rate.

As well, Government of Canada short-term treasury bills were yielding around 7% back then. So, the branch could pay the depositor 5% and earn a 2% spread.

Only a few people knew enough to find a stockbroker and try to buy the treasury bills directly. But, then the treasury bills traded in blocks of $100,000 face value!

The world has changed.

Now, most employers direct deposit pay electronically to any bank account in Canada of the employee's choice.

Short-term treasury bills pay under ¼%. High rolling depositors know they can move any $80,000 they have out of that low yielding account at their local branch to one of the online-only banks. Don't need to invest in $100,000 blocks to get good rates on deposits.

That local branch? Maybe visit it once in a while to get cash at its ATM. Not very often though. One uses a credit card for most purchases and pays it off via online banking.

Norman sums it up well: ‘the world has changed’

I have not been to an ATM for probably last 2 years (nothing to do with Covid, just no need). 100% of my banking are done online or thru phone call. Almost 100% of my purchases are charged to credit cards (the only benefit Covid brings is to advance the cashless society in a much faster pace). I only use cash when some ethnic restaurants insist cash only…

Bill said
I think a lot of people at banks are getting or rearranging, etc existing loans, mortgages, lines of credit, debt. Debt-free savers don't really need to go there. I've been carrying the same $40 around for months, never need to use cash.  

That tends to be the case since CSRs handle far more processes than mere banking transactions these days. That said, I've never seen the amount of activity that Loonie describes at any of the banks I've been associated with here (suburban area), so it must be highly local/regional in nature. The nearest bank or CU branch of any type is at least 5km from our house.

There is also such thing as Canadian cash economy (underground economy).

Home contractors being paid under the table continues to represent the largest share of underground activity at 26.2%, followed by retail trade at 12.3%, and companies involved in finance, insurance, real estate, rental and leasing at 10.3%, StatsCan reported.

I think these people will continue coming to bank branches to pay their utility and other bills with cash.
Just like they will continue paying cash at grocery stores and elsewhere.

I think it's Sweden where the banks won't give or accept cash, so we'll see how cashless we go here. Criminals, underground, etc will have to go even more crypto, I guess. Which reminds me - I haven't heard much about Bitcoin on here lately, I hear it's on sale right now, down about 50% in the last few months.