The announcement is the latest in a series of bank closures in the Crown Dependencies that have been announced over the last 18 months, and comes as even global banking giants like HSBC have been shrinking their businesses by eliminating less profitable operations.
On Monday, as reported, the Bank of Ireland said it would close its 32-year-old Isle of Man operations by the end of next August, in order to focus on its UK and Irish businesses, while in April 2012, Allied Irish Bank announced it would close its Jersey and Isle of Man branches by the end of this year, as part of an overall plan to become “smaller and more domestically focussed”.
The Co-operative Bank has been under pressure recently, as a result of problems stemming from its 2009 acquisition of the Britannia Building Society, which saddled it with some bad debts.
In March, the bank reported a £673.7m loss for the year to the end of December, compared with a profit of £54.2m during the same period in 2011. Shortly thereafter, it announced it would not go ahead with its plan to buy 631 bank branches from the Lloyds Banking Group.
A Co-operative press office spokesperson said the closure was “a direct result of our strategy to simplify our business”, which has already seen the closure of about 40 branches in the UK so far this year.
Although the Co-op does not have any branches in Jersey, it has three in the Isle of Man, under the Britannia International brand, which are not affected by the Guernsey branch closure.
The Guernsey branch, located in St Peter Port, reportedly handled £400m from some 16,000 customers, of which 6,000 came from Guernsey and 2,000 to 3,000 from Jersey. Account holders are being contacted directly over the next few days, but customers are being told not to be concerned and that any outstanding mortgages and fixed term bonds would continue to be honoured.
