According to the latest Quarterly Report on Financial Inclusion Monitoring prepared by Ivie, more than 70,000 people residing in 79 municipalities with over 500 inhabitants in rural Spain benefited last year from new measures taken by the sector to ensure a physical access point to financial services. This represents a 32.5% decrease in the number of people who previously could not access these services.
In just a few months, decisive progress has been made on the Plan designed by the associations to strengthen financial inclusion in rural Spain. For municipalities without in-person access points, the agreed commitment distinguishes between those with fewer and more than 500 inhabitants. In the first case, the solution adopted has taken the form of Correos Cash under the terms that the three associations (AEB, CECA, and Unacc) signed with Correos in mid-2022. In the second case, municipalities with more than 500 inhabitants, the proposed solution is through branches, ATMs, mobile offices, and financial agents.
The banks’ commitment is to benefit more than 660,000 people, equivalent to 1.4% of those living in municipalities without access to a cash supply point. 90% of these municipalities did not have one in 2008, which was the year of maximum branch network expansion. Therefore, banking will be present, through various designed solutions, even where it had never been before.
The sector has made a notable effort over the past year to strengthen financial inclusion in rural areas and to improve service to elderly people and people with disabilities. This is a novel and pioneering initiative in terms of ambition and dynamism in its execution.
According to the Annual Report on Monitoring Measures Aimed at Improving Personalized Service to Elderly People or People with Disabilities, banks have trained more than 70,000 of their employees, almost half of the sector’s workforce, to provide specialized and adapted service to the target group. More than 466,000 hours of training for their workers, equivalent to each employee receiving more than six and a half hours of training to better serve the elderly.
In addition, last year the number of branches operating with extended teller hours doubled, more than 2.4 million calls from customers over 65 years of age were handled on a priority basis, 91% of ATMs were adapted, and more than 80% of institutions also adapted their digital channels, among other measures.
According to a recent satisfaction study prepared by Inmark, 62.5% of all respondents over 65 years of age have perceived at least some of the improvements implemented by the banks of which they are customers. And 87.7% consider them important.
According to the aforementioned survey, a large majority of elderly people express their satisfaction with the use of the different channels that banks make available to them, from 71.6% for branch service to 74.7% for internet banking and 75.6% for mobile banking. And highlighting effectiveness, as 89.4% can successfully complete transactions initiated through digital channels.
Banks are aware of the need to continue improving service to our elderly and people with disabilities, an improvement that does not necessarily occur in all services or administrations. The in-person channel is the most used by these groups, a fact that has served to strengthen personalized service over the past year, something that has been well valued according to the survey.
Promoting economic development and social welfare: these are two objectives that banks share with other companies and public administrations, and hence public-private collaboration is very relevant to achieving them.
José Luis Martínez Campuzano, spokesperson for the Spanish Banking Association
