Banks Pack Up and Close Doors... 1,500 Branches Shut Down Over the Past 5 Years

[Asia Economy Reporter Song Hwajeong] As non-face-to-face transactions increase, the number of bank branches closing and employees leaving banks through voluntary retirement is also rising.

According to the banking sector on the 5th, a total of 1,817 employees left four major banks?KB Kookmin, Shinhan, Hana, and Woori Banks?through voluntary retirement last month.

At KB Kookmin Bank, 674 employees who applied for voluntary retirement between the 3rd and 6th of last month packed up as of the 21st, and at Shinhan Bank, 250 employees who applied between the 3rd and 11th left as of the 17th. Hana Bank processed applications from the 3rd to the 7th of the same month, with 228 wage peak eligible employees and 250 quasi-retirement eligible employees, totaling 478, retiring on the 31st. Woori Bank also completed the voluntary retirement process for 415 employees on the same day.

Earlier, about 500 employees of SC Jeil Bank took special retirement as of October 29 last year, and at Citibank, which decided to withdraw from retail banking, about 2,300 employees, accounting for approximately 66% of the staff, applied for voluntary retirement in November of the same year. NH Nonghyup Bank also saw 427 employees apply for voluntary retirement in the same month and leave the company by the end of last year.

In the past four months alone, 5 domestic commercial banks and 2 foreign banks have seen 5,044 employees leave.

The increase in employees leaving banks is due to the rise of non-face-to-face transactions, which has led to an increase in branch closures. It has been revealed that about 1,500 domestic commercial bank branches have disappeared over the past five years.

According to data received by People Power Party lawmaker Kang Ming-guk, a member of the National Assembly's Financial Services Committee, from the Financial Supervisory Service, a total of 1,507 domestic bank branches were closed from 2016 to October 2021.

By year, the closures were 273 in 2016, 420 in 2017, 115 in 2018, 135 in 2019, 332 in 2020, and 238 from January to October 2021.

Looking at the branch closure status by domestic banks from 2016 to 2020, the four major commercial banks?Hana Bank (304 branches), KB Kookmin Bank (225 branches), Woori Bank (165 branches), and Shinhan Bank (136 branches)?accounted for more than 60% of the total. They were followed by Citibank (91 branches), NH Nonghyup Bank (79 branches), SC Jeil Bank (66 branches), Busan Bank (50 branches), and IBK Industrial Bank (42 branches).

In particular, branch closures were concentrated in the metropolitan area. By city and province, Seoul had 515 closures (40.4%), Gyeonggi Province 245 (19.2%), making about 60% of the total closures in the metropolitan area. This was followed by Busan with 98 (7.7%), Daegu 74 (5.8%), Gyeongnam 54 (4.2%), and Incheon 51 (4.0%).

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.