A Tale of Two Cities: Multiplexed Banking Access in Birmingham and London

Accessibility to banking is rapidly changing due to the onset of new digital technologies. In urban areas, multiple overlapping banking channels are available, ranging from physical ATMs to digital broadband. However, city scale analysis of accessibility to different demographic groups is lacking. Understanding this can inform smart city design and prioritize the deployment of digital infrastructure, whilst delaying any decommissioning of legacy physical branches. Here, for the first time, we present a short paper on our analysis of UK's two largest cities, showing different banking accessibility results and their relation to social electronic inclusion classes. In particular, we show how poor accessibility occurs in areas with higher retired demographics and near social deprivation, and how the urban population of Birmingham and London are better equipped and more socially ready for digital transformation than rural areas.