Barclays rolls out face-to-face video banking

Barclays is to offer a “video banking” service that allows customers to have a “face-to-face” conversation with an adviser via their smartphone, tablet or computer, wherever they are in the world, whatever the time of day. The bank said the move was “a UK banking first”.

The service will be rolled out from 8 December, with Barclays claiming it represented “a watershed moment for the way people do their banking in the UK”.

However, while some will see this as a welcome glimpse of the future of banking, others may fear it is a precursor to more branch closures. In the first nine months of this year Barclays closed 54 branches, although it opened nine during the same period.

Other banks are also shutting branches; in October, Lloyds Banking Group revealed plans to close 200 as it “digitises” its business.

The move is also an admission that while millions of people do most, if not all, of their banking online or via their smartphone, there are times when only a face-to-face chat with a real person will do.

“Alongside the availability of colleagues in branch, through mobile, telephone and social media, the service will give customers the ability to carry out a face-to-face video call with a Barclays colleague from their smartphone, tablet or computer at a time and place convenient to them,” said Barclays.

“The 24/7 service will create a round-the-clock, face-to-face banking service for the first time.”

The first to try out the new technology will be the bank’s Premier customers, who typically earn £75,000 or more a year or have £100,000-plus saved or invested. From next Monday, they will be invited to conduct their annual account review with their relationship manager using the service, which is available via an app for all iOS and Android devices (laptop and PC users will be invited to install a plugin).

It will then be rolled out to mortgage, business and wealth customers from “early 2015” before being made available to all retail customers. The aim, where possible, will be to automatically match a customer to a specific member of staff they have spoken to previously.

Other banks and building societies have already started offering more limited video services. In April, Nationwide building society launched a service available at more than 60 of its branches that allows customers to talk to a mortgage adviser via a videolink at a time that suits them.

It said at the time that it planned to introduce the technology throughout its branch network, and to expand it to include other products. Since then, the society said the service had breathed new life into some branches that had seen a downturn in their customer numbers.

Steven Cooper, Barclays’s chief executive of personal banking, said: “While many of our customers are increasingly using digital channels to complete routine transactions, for the important moments you just can’t beat face-to-face conversations, yet traditional branch opening hours don’t always give customers that choice.”

The bank said its new service would put customers “in control of when and where they want to do their banking”.