READING, Pa. – Over the next year, 77 staff at Santander Bank in Reading will be made redundant.
The company says the cuts will only affect customer-facing call center teams and doesn’t expect to impact customer service.
“Many banks are facing crises, from minor to major,” said Farhad Saboori, an economics professor at Albright College.
Because of this, Saboori says, banks like Santander are changing their portfolio of activities.
Last year, the company announced that it would no longer issue residential mortgages and home equity lines of credit.
The move resulted in 53 layoffs at a Montgomery County branch and warnings there would be more.
In addition, the professor says many banks are making the changes we’ve seen at fast food chains.
“For example McDonald’s: you don’t see people taking your money and that’s how this shift in banking is happening,” Saboori explained. “You don’t need that many people face to face to meet the customers.”
Online banking and app use are increasingly coming into focus.
Are the cuts at the bank an indicator of an economy on the brink of recession?
“The financial crisis is very difficult to predict,” said the professor. “It’s the result of asset bubbles, and no one in economics has been able to figure out why the value of some assets rises significantly above their underlying value until it’s too late.”
Like many others, he watches. If a recession hits, as some have predicted, he believes it will be mild and the economy will recover.
“I’ve seen enough of this economy being able to take hits and get back to normal,” he added.
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