Comment by eterm

When I went to a bank recently, I discovered my local high street "bank" branch is now mostly just internet kiosks with an under-trained and probably underpaid assistant there between the handful of kiosks to help people log on to it.

It is nothing like the experience of growing up in the early 90's and what banks were then.

Consider that everyone did their banking in person and people dealt with a lot of cheques. Oh, and banks didn't tend to open at weekends, you had to find time during the week.

There was a need for a lot of tellers, and banks were incredibly busy places.

"99% closed" is obviously hyperbole, especially counting by branch, but if you were to count by tellers or by people visiting their bank, I could well believe it.