Time to burst the POP report

The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority yesterday published its annual data on "points of presence", a voluminous and now probably pointless exercise that maps the location of every bank branch, agency ATM and even Eftpos terminal.

APRA said the number of "points of presence" with a "branch level of service" increased by 106, or 1.6 per cent, to 6528 in the year to June 2007.

The APRA breakdown suggests that building societies are opening branches while credit unions are closing them, though this may largely reflect the takeover by Home Building Society of State/West.

APRA said the number of branches increased by five per cent over the year in remote regions and increased by eight per cent in very remote regions.

Collecting data on branches in the bush is the original rationale for the collection of this data. Though as the data now shows, and has done since APRA cobbled together this report some years after it was a hot political issue, banks are opening branches rather than closing them.