In the first half of this year, 90 bank stores were closed.
With 11 new stores, the total number of bank stores decreased by 79. This seems to be due to the growing trend of non-face-to-face transactions such as mobile banking due to COVID-19.
The Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) released the ‘Status of Domestic Bank Store Operations in the First Half of the Year’ with these details.
According to the Financial Supervisory Service, at the end of June, there were 6,326 branches of domestic banks.
Here, the FSS explained that the trend of decreasing stores since COVID-19 has continued.
In 2018, the number of bank stores that closed was 23, which increased slightly due to a decrease of 57 in 2019, the following year, but in 2020, when the COVID-19 outbreak occurred, 304 stores disappeared.
In the first half of this year alone, Kookmin Bank and Hana Bank decreased by 18 each, followed by Korea Development Bank (8) and Daegu Bank (7).
By region, there was a net decrease of 61 stores in metropolitan areas, and a net decrease of 18 stores in non-metropolitan areas.
The Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) said, “We will respect the autonomy of banks, but will guide them to minimize inconvenience to financial users such as the elderly.”
