The number of villages without access to banking services has gone down until 75% during the three last. For Alberto Aza: “the measured start-ups by the Spanish banking sector have made possible that the financial exclusion has fallen in 2023 38.4% in municipality number terms and 71.5% in inhabitant'”terms.
Withdraw money, pay a bill or update a passbook are everyday gestures in the city, but a real challenge in some places of the rural Spain. The financial breach, together with the ageing of the population, is had become one of the big concerns of the so-called Spain emptied. However, while other simple services as the health or the trade maintain a negative trend, the banking new initiatives have boosted the financial accessibility during last years.
A clear evidence of the advance is that, in just three years, the amount of municipalities of more than 500 inhabitants without access in person to banking services has fallen 75%. Thus it reflects the Report on the Financial Inclusion in Spain, manager by employers' associations AEB, CECA and Unacc to the Valencian Researches Institute Economics (Ivie) to tackle the risk of financial exclusion in the rural areas and the Spain emptied before the progressive bank branches reduction and ATMs.
It is more, the study, with details of 2023, reveals that just 0.9% of the town follows without having access to financial services in person. At the end of last year, barely 60 from a total of 4,142 municipalities with more than 500 inhabitants lacked they. These figures, “especially low”, according to Alberto Aza, CECA's spokesman, are the result of “put in motion measures by the Spanish banking sector, that they have made possible that the financial exclusion has fallen in 2023 38.4% in municipality number terms and 71.5% in inhabitant'”terms.
Even though during last years have disappeared more than 10,000 ATMs (3%, placed at municipalities of fewer than 1,000 inhabitants), Aza emphasises the stock that they have improved the situation: the facility of new ATMs in places without previous access, the expansion of financial agents and mobile offices, and the increasing training in financial and digital education, that benefited to more than 650,000 older people in 2024.
In addition, the collaboration with Correos and the local trade has allowed offering services to more than 1.1 million people in municipalities without physical branches, thanks to initiatives as the cashback (that it allows dropping money in local businesses) and the service of Correos Cash. In the opinion of Aza, although the cashback has still “a more limited”implementation, supposes “a strategic opportunity to expand the access to the cash via the local”businesses.
On the other hand, although the sensitivity with respect to the financial exclusion has been increased during last years, companies as a Rural Eurosavings bank take closing the breach in the rural areas for more than a decade. Such as they emphasise from the company, his Plan of Expansión, initiated in 2011, has multiplied for more than the double its office network, reaching more than 480 branches currently, and it remains as only financial institution in a total of 70 towns of difficult access.
From Rural Eurosavings bank emphasise its approach concentrating on the villages, where is concentrated more than 50% of its clients, with a customised attention to more than 80,000 people that they are “rescued of the financial”exclusion, underline.
