Financial exclusion and the geography of bank and building society branch closure in Britain

Abstract

Financial exclusion refers to those processes by which individuals and households face difficulties in accessing financial services. Economic geography was an important catalyst in developing research into processes of financial exclusion in the 1990s, focusing initially on the geographies of physical access. This research was motivated by a concern with the equity effects of financial systems, and identifying a general process of branch closure across industrial economies. The paper contains an analysis of the changing geographies of bank and building society closure in Britain between 1995 and 2003 and reveals that closures continue to be disproportionately concentrated within poorer areas, yet the geography of financial infrastructure has been written out of UK financial exclusion policy. The paper concludes by arguing that policy needs to take greater account of the uneven geography of retail financial services production and consumption.