{"id":249,"date":"2008-09-21T13:18:52","date_gmt":"2008-09-21T13:18:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/?p=249"},"modified":"2008-09-21T13:19:47","modified_gmt":"2008-09-21T13:19:47","slug":"van-based-mobile-bank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/archives\/249","title":{"rendered":"Can&#8217;t get to the bank? Let the (mobile) bank come to you!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Hot on the heels of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/archives\/219\" target=\"_self\">hairdressing van<\/a>, I&#8217;ve come accross a story about another innovative van conversion that is bringing important services to local people &#8211; rather than making them travel.<\/p>\n<p>The closure of the majority of rural bank branches over the last 10-15 years is old news &#8211; all the major banks have done it, claiming that they served too few customers to justify their cost.<\/p>\n<p>However, it seems the tide might be turning slightly with an innovative new service from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.natwest.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">NatWest<\/a>. The bank has been showing customers in Somerset, Devon and Cornwall that there is &#8216;another way&#8217; &#8211; by providing a mobile banking service that visits a number of otherwise bankless villages every week to prevent local people having to travel to a nearby town &#8211; often 10 or more miles &#8211; to do their banking.<\/p>\n<p>The NatWest mobile bank is based on a Ford Transit chassis cab with a specially-designed secure Luton box body that contains a secure area, accessed from the cab, for the two cashiers to work in. Customers enter through a door at the rear into a public area with two counters at which they can be served &#8211; just like a regular bank. Customers can pay in cash and cheques, check their balances and make transfers to other accounts &#8211; all the most common requirements.<\/p>\n<p>The mobile bank van makes several stops each day and over the course of one week is able to provide banking services to a surprisingly wide area, serving rural businesses and personal customers.<\/p>\n<p>For more details, take a look at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailymail.co.uk\/money\/article-1058742\/Where-I-park-bank--The-branch-town-closed-villages-innovative-solutions-.html\" target=\"_blank\">this story in the Daily Mail<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A clever van conversion for NatWest Bank has enabled them to provide a mobile banking service to customers in villages whose bricks and mortar branches have been closed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[415,49,414,413,404],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}