Impact of closures adding to steady erosion in satisfaction over the past five years
The impact of branch closures has caused farmers’ satisfaction with their banks to slide, according to a new survey.
Lending to farmers represents significant business for the country’s banks, with Federated Farmers’ latest banking survey finding that 79% of farmers have a mortgage with an average value of $4.3 million and a median value of $2.2 million.
Read more: Farmers urge banks to be fair about passing on costs
However, the survey found that a sizable 71% of respondents said they were concerned about bank branch closures – with 42% of that cohort saying they needed branches to carry out their business and 56% saying they worried about the impact of closures on their local communities.
This concern led 62% of respondents to say they are satisfied with their bank relationship, down four points from November and continuing a steady erosion in satisfaction over the past five years, when it was over 80%.
“Provincial towns are under all sorts of pressures, with workforce gaps, farms jobs disappearing as productive land is planted out in pines for carbon credits, competition from online sales trends that all traditional retailers face, to name some of the factors,” said Andrew Hoggard, president of Federated Farmers. “Bank branch closures are just another hit on confidence, making doing business in rural areas that much harder, and another reason for young people to look to cities for their future when agriculture is the main way New Zealand earns its living in the world.”
