AIB to tell Oireachtas committee its cashless branch plan is 'off the agenda' 

The AIB branch on Dame Street in Dublin. The bank's plans to go cashless have been abandoned. Picture: Conor Ó Mearáin /Collins

AIB will tell an Oireachtas committee today that its previous plans to make 70 branches cashless are now “off the agenda”.

The bank u-turned after a backlash to the plans during the summer. It will tell the Oireachtas Finance Committee that it was “proven wrong” that its plans would meet customers’ “cash needs and expectations”.

Permanent TSB, meanwhile, will tell the committee it has “no plans to make any changes to our current model of providing cash services to customers”.

It will also say that, despite a shifting model of offering banking services, it “doesn’t have to mean that branches should disappear”.

Bank of Ireland will also address the committee. It will provide detail on supporting Ukrainians who need banking services, including guidance on transferring assets.

“We have hired more than 30 people, over half of whom are themselves displaced from Ukraine due to the Russian invasion, to support Ukrainian refugees to open accounts,” the bank will say. 

“Bank of Ireland has opened over 4,000 accounts to date for displaced Ukrainians.” 

A key issue currently facing Ireland’s retail banks is the exit of Ulster Bank and KBC from the market, which requires the mass migration of hundreds of thousands of customers to alternate accounts.

AIB will tell the committee that it has already opened 205,000 new accounts this year, a 110% increase on the same period last year.

“The unprecedented transition of almost one million current and deposit accounts, involving many millions of direct debits and standing orders, involves huge disruption for customers,” it will say. 

However, given the levels of investment in personnel and technology that we are making, we will minimise customers’ problems in transitioning to their new financial arrangements.

PTSB has taken on “tens of thousands” of customers from the exiting banks who have switched over, and said it has put in place a number of approaches to deal with the challenge of taking on so many new customers in a relatively short space of time.

“We believe we are now seeing real traction in this regard. We have opened over 70,000 current accounts year to date.” 

Bank of Ireland will tell the committee it has “scaled-up” significantly to meet the challenge, with an additional 655 resources across a number of teams.

“This has helped Bank of Ireland open the same number of personal current accounts in the first six months of 2022 as it did for the whole of 2021,” it said.