Madam,

I would like to express my personal anger at the news that HSBC is closing its Aberaeron branch.

I have been banking with them since 1976. I am surprised and find it hard to believe that there has been a 35 per cent drop in customers over the last year and they only have 70 account holders, especially after the NatWest bank closed a few years ago. What did they do to get NatWest customers to transfer their accounts to them?

The only remaining bank left will be Barclays, which is only open three days a week. Yes, the already really busy post office in Costcutters will facilitate paying in cheques etc, but it will not be able to service local business accounts.

The obvious reasoning behind HSBC’s logic is to encourage internet banking, but then one has to ask oneself, why be loyal to HSBC when they show disloyalty to customers?

If I am forced to do internet banking then I choose an ethical bank like Triodos Bank and transfer my money, accounts and loyalty to them.

An alternative is to transfer our business to Barclays en masse as a protest. Perhaps if we did, then they just may open five days a week.

Why I preferred banking at HSBC was its location and ease of parking temporarily outside or near it. Now there will be an empty bank with vaults, just like the now-empty HSBC bank in Machynlleth, which closed last year.

This means that the Aberystwyth branch of HSBC is servicing an area of 20 or so square miles.

What I’d really like to see is a bank of Wales take it over, a bank that invests in Wales and its people, run and owned by customers rather than a multinational company, whose shareholders care less about customers and more about their vulgar gross profits.

Yours etc,

Alan James Raddon,

shoemaker,

Aberarth.

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