BRANCHES of HSBC Bank in Skipton and in Settle are due to close next year, it has been announced.

Skipton HSBC in High Street is due to close on June 13 and although the Settle branch is included in a list of 114 branches to be closed in 2023, no date for its closure has been set.

The move comes as the bank shares that more people are choosing online banking over using a physical branch to do their banking.

HSBC found that the number of people visiting has dropped by 65 per cent over the course of five years.

A spokesperson for the bank said: "The decline in branch use has accelerated so much since the Covid-19 pandemic that some of the branches closing are now serving fewer than 250 customers a week."

The bank also shared that 97.5 per cent of its banking transactions are now done online.

Jackie Uhi, HSBC UK managing director of UK distribution, said: "People are changing the way they bank and footfall in many branches is at an all-time low, with no signs of it returning.

"The decision to close a branch is never easy or taken lightly, especially if we are the last branch in an area, so we’ve invested heavily in our ‘post closure’ strategy, including providing free tablet devices to selected branch customers who do not already have a device to bank digitally, alongside one-to-one coaching to help them migrate to digital banking."