Lisbon, Jan. 14, 2025 (Lusa) - The CEO of Portugal's state-owned Caixa Geral de Depósitos (CGD) said on Tuesday in parliament that the public bank would not close any branches in 2025 or 2026 and that the priority is to provide customers with the means for digital inclusion.
"We're not going to [close branches] and we're going to keep the same number of branches in 2025 and 2026," Paulo Macedo said at a Budget and Finance Committee hearing.
CGD's chief executive officer (CEO) was heard today in parliament about the banking services provided by CGD after various entities — the Workers' Committee, unions, and local councils — criticised the reduction of services in some branches.
According to Macedo, what has been done at the bank is to adapt the branches to the evolution of technology because "nobody wants Caixa to remain immobile, for everyone else to modernise and Caixa not to", and he added that there are workers "to support citizens with more handling difficulties" to be able to carry out banking operations (even the most digitalised ones) in all branches.
Paulo Macedo also said that while in the 1980s and 1990s, the big issue of inclusion in banking was geographical inclusion, today, it is digital inclusion. CGD has adapted its branches but, at the same time, providing the means not to leave customers out.
"We're not going to neglect physical inclusion, but the priority is to give people the means for digital inclusion," said Macedo.
CGD's CEO said there is no degradation of service at CGD because otherwise, it wouldn't be a "leading bank" and growing in credit and deposits.
Following reports of reduced services at CGD bank branches in the final months of 2024, MPs called various organisations to parliament to clarify the situation.
Last week in parliament, the CGD Workers' Committee said that the number of CGD branch closures up to 2023 had had a huge impact on the bank's reputation. So there had been a paradigm shift, opting to keep branches but reducing the services provided, and considered that this strategy had an impact above all on the interior of mainland Portugal and the islands and that the company was thus failing to fulfil its public service mission.
STEC, the most representative union at CGD, has also spoken of the degradation of CGD's mission as a 100% public bank, "which ignores its responsibility in social and territorial cohesion".
Even today, in parliament, Macedo said that "no one gives [CGD] lessons on supporting the countryside" and that if it is true that Crédito Agrícola has more branches, this bank is not present in 10% of the country and that CGD is in 98% of the municipalities.
Regarding the reduction in services provided by CGD, he considered that what "is worth looking at is the evolution of the number of transactions" because they have grown significantly. He added that thanks to technology, small businesses like cafés and stationery shops can now deposit coins at any time.
Regarding customers who can't use more technological services, he said that CGD realises it has to support them and that, should the need arise, there will be no CGD branch without an employee to manually pay a pension.
At the hearing, Macedo was very critical of the Workers' Committee, saying that he doesn't put it “on the same level” as the unions, stating that the latter hasn't achieved anything beneficial for the workers in years. In contrast, the unions have reached agreements that improve salaries.
Regarding a possible purchase of Novo Banco, after questions from MPs, CGD's CEO said that he would never publicly reveal any acquisition and that competing banks are "delighted" with the information about the bank that is made public.
At the end of September, CGD had 6,227 employees and 512 branches.
CGD's accounts for 2024 will be released this quarter, and it is expected that 2024 will have been its best year ever in terms of profits. Until September, it had a net profit of €1.369 billion (40% more than in the same period in 2023).
Paulo Macedo will remain CGD's CEO, but part of the management team will change, according to the proposal submitted to the Finance Ministry for the 2025-2028 term of office, which has been reported by the press but which the public bank won't comment on.
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