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Extended hours, ATMs, web pages and adapted applications, personalized services: thanks to a petition signed by more than 650,000 people, the attitude of banks vis-à-vis seniors will change in Spain.
The petition launched by Carlos San Juan (78) has had the particular effect that ticket machines will be adapted, “with simplified language and visuals” for the elderly.
REUTERS
For Carlos San Juan, the incident of too many was a problem with an ATM, when the staff of the bank did not want to come out to help him and even refused to receive him, for lack of an appointment . Outraged by the lack of attention from his bank, this 78-year-old former urologist, now retired in Valencia, then decided to write a petition entitled “Soy mayor, no idiota” (“I am old, not stupid”) to denounce the attitude of banks towards their elderly customers.
A hundred friends and relatives first signed it, he explains. It was in December. Shortly after, the petition collected 650,000 signatures before being forwarded to the authorities. It was the best way to put pressure on the banks and get them to move.
Result: a protocol solemnly signed, last week, in Madrid, in the presence of the Minister of Economy, Nadia Calviño, by which the banks undertake to improve their services to the elderly. They thus promised that the agencies would extend their opening hours to customers, that “the elderly would receive preferential service” and that the distributors, applications and web pages would be adapted, “with a simplified language and visual”.
Carlos San Juan thus hopes to put an end to the “drama of people who still have books of accounts, of elderly people queuing, with motor disabilities, in wheelchairs, with walkers, canes, who come one day and have to come back the next day. This drama is also his.
“I have Parkinson’s disease. I go to the bank at times when I know I won’t cause a queue.”
“I have Parkinson’s disease,” he says. He explains that he goes to the bank “at times when I know I won’t cause a queue” because the process makes him nervous and means he needs more time. He calls for more patience with people of his generation, because “even if we have the will to learn, we can learn one day and forget the day after”. The elderly are “not at all opposed to the digital world”, he assures, but they ask for “a more human transition” towards this new era.
Bibliobus equipped with a ticket machine
In rural Spain, bank desertification seems irreversible, but some initiatives are trying to remedy it. In the small Castilian village of Añover de Tormes, where about a hundred people live, a bus suddenly emerges from the fog. It is a “Bibliobus”, a vehicle that has been promoting access to culture in 120 villages for three decades. In November, it was equipped with an ATM. This is “an important first step towards solving a big problem”, explains David Mingo, responsible for culture in the province of Salamanca. According to him, what older people want is above all human contact.
Agustina Juan, 79, admits she doesn’t know how to withdraw money with a bank card. In fact, in the three villages visited by AFP, only one person withdrew money from the “Bibliobus”. “You know why I have one,” she asks. “It’s to pay with when I go to the supermarket.”
(AFP)