has decided to put an end to Bankia’s agile branch model. The Catalan group, once closed due to the absorption of the extinct nationalized entity, has redefined the entire operating system of the network. The 122 agile branches have stopped working as they had been doing until now and have started a project to become transactional transformation centers, with the aim of adapting to CaixaBank’s distribution schemes and up to their new mission.
Until now, their hours were uninterrupted from early morning until mid-afternoon, but from September they will serve customers until noon, except on Thursdays, which will also include the afternoon. In July and August, as usual, they operate during the summer, only in the morning.
This network was implemented by in 2013, a year after becoming Bankia’s president, with the aim of establishing where waiting times had to be minimal.
The concept of these branches was based on that, fast service for the simplest transactions. This network served as support in large cities for advisory offices, since the most usual operations remained so that the employees of the latter could dedicate themselves to the treatment of value-added products.
Currently, a large part of the procedures of the agile branches (withdrawal of money, payment of receipts, deposits, transfers, consultation of movements, modification of direct debits or payment of taxes) are carried out from the mobile application, the website or the ATMs. Since the outbreak of the pandemic, this type of transaction has hardly been carried out over the counter, so the model has lost much of its essence.
8 employees on average
Each of these offices was located less than a 10-minute walk from the rest of the traditional branches it supported and had an average of eight workers. In addition, they had between four and eight multifunction ATMs installed.
The agile centers are now part of the conventional network of CaixaBank, which is waiting to start the adjustment agreed with the unions. The entity plans to close 27% of the total number of offices that it has deployed in our country (1,534). Likewise, the group’s intention is to increase the number of branches dedicated to customer advice, which will go from the current almost 600 to nearly a thousand. These, internally called Store, have uninterrupted hours from morning to mid-afternoon, but customers cannot carry out ordinary procedures, such as withdrawing money at the teller.
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