Earlier this week I did something slightly strange: I went to the branch of a High Street Bank and interacted with…a human!

I can scarcely remember the last time I did this and it wasn’t easy to locate. A quick search on Google Maps had told me that across the whole of Norfolk and Suffolk only nine branches of HSBC remain.

I remember when Barclays closed the nearest branch to my current home in 2020, HSBC drove an articulated truck into the town square with great fanfare, announcing they were taking over the Barclays branch building. My parents were so delighted they switched bank for the first time in over forty years. On Friday 9th October 2015, HSBC Reepham closed its doors.

My mission – and it felt a bit like that – was to pay in a cheque. My HSBC App had told me the easiest way to do this was to use the App’s paying-in facility. It would have been nice if it had made it clear upfront that this wouldn’t work for cheques above a certain value.

So I found myself at 20 High Street, Saxmundham, queuing behind a couple who were discussing their holiday plans with the friendly cashier who clearly knew them personally.

Their conversation ended in less time than it took me to find out the App wasn’t going to work for me, and I was a greeted with a friendly smile that almost made me too feel like I knew the gentleman behind the counter.

He quickly confirmed that both the cheque and paying-in slip had been correctly completed and told me the funds would clear within 24 hours. Less than five minutes after entering No.20 I was on my way: job done and feeling happy about life.

“Branch” is an interesting word when it comes to business and particularly financial services.

If one considers its derivation it comes from trees. And trees would surely die without the branches that carry the leaves that allow them to photosynthesize. Yet most banks have now truncated their branch networks to the point of leaving little more than a collection of stumps, as cost-cutting and technology have displaced their presence on the High Street.

Railways are another area where the term branch is used, as in “branch lines”. Nowadays it sounds almost quaint following the swing of the Beeching Axe in the 1960s, which saw thousands of miles of lines closed.

Perhaps this reads like a Luddite’s lament for a bygone era, but I wonder if the term branch and the railways offer a lesson to the banks, and more importantly those businesses that still attach a value to face-to-face interactions.

If we had known in the Sixties what we know today, about global warming and the need for decarbonisation, might some of those branch lines still be open?

Humans have evolved with the light of a fire reflecting on their faces, not the glow of a hand-held device. I believe service companies underestimate meeting in person at their peril.