Blairmore latest Alberta community to lose bank branch — a trend seen across Canada

Valerie Robinson has been a CIBC customer for almost 30 years. Now, that’s coming to an end.

She lives and does her banking in the Crownest Pass town of Blairmore, Alta..

The bank notified the community of 1,500 in September that the local branch will close on Feb. 5. The nearest other CIBC branch is about 40 kilometres away in Pincher Creek.

Unhappy about being asked to begin a long-distance relationship with her bank, Robinson complained to a local staff member.

“The representative actually didn’t really feel that she could do anything,” said Robinson.

“She just said, ‘Well, those decisions are made somewhere else, and I can just write down your complaint.’”

CIBC will remove its ATM in Blairmore too.

Robinson is worried about locals’ reduced access to cash: the currency of the small transactions that fund the life of the town.

“All of our fundraising, like with the service groups, curling, sports activities for kids — you’re not going to have a kid going around with a debit machine to sell their raffle tickets, you know.”

There are other banks in town: Scotiabank, RBC and ATB.

But Robinson says switching her account somewhere else feels like a gamble.

“This could be a snowball effect,” she told CBC News.

“Banks in all small communities, they feel that they can save money by moving out. And so which bank do I move to? You know, it’s like rolling the dice. Are they going to be the next ones to close?”

Dozens of other residents in the area shared their complaints and concerns online about CIBC’s decision to leave town.

Some said they’d take their business elsewhere; others wondered about the future of in-person banking in the area.

Data on bank branches in Alberta seems to validate their worries.

Bank customers in Champion, Alta., upset by branch closure

According to its annual public accountability statements, CIBC closed 12 small-town branches in Alberta from 2014 to 2024.

In that same period, Calgary and Edmonton lost just two branches each, and Lethbridge lost one.

Five new in-person CIBC branches opened in larger cities in Alberta over those years, but just one opened in a small town: Beaumont, in 2014.

The Canadian Bankers Association says Alberta lost 64 branches across all the major national banks between 2014 and 2024: a nine per cent decrease over that decade.

Meanwhile, in that decade the province’s population grew by almost 21 per cent.

The loss of retail banking service locations is not unique to CIBC or to Alberta or to small towns. The Canadian Bankers Association says the number of bank branches is down nationwide: about six per cent from 2020 to 2024.

But the closures hit harder in small communities where the options are fewer and farther apart.

A Bank of Canada report from March points to a years-long national trend of rural and remote residents travelling twice as far to access in-person financial services as urban residents.

The report also says the percentage of Canadians living in small or remote towns without any branches rose about two per cent from 2019 to 2023.

Canadian city dwellers and small town residents alike lost some degree of access to service; banks and credit unions closed 561 branches between 2019 and 2023, along with more than 900 bank-owned ATMs.

That period saw Canada’s population grow by almost seven per cent.

If Robinson and her fellow Crowsnest Pass residents are wondering about a possibly bankless future, they can look to Vauxhall, Alta., with a population of just over 1,400.

Its only CIBC branch closed in 2018. Then, despite the town council’s entreaties to stay, Scotiabank closed its branch in 2022, giving its office building to the town as a parting gift.

It’s now the town council chambers.

Mayor Kim Cawley says she’s grateful to have the use of the building, but being bankless has come at a cost to the community, especially seniors.

“It’s tough to drive out of town, especially in the winter months when the roads aren’t so good,” she said.

“I think it impacted some local businesses as far as … their cash deposits or needing floats for their tills and that sort of thing. To have to drive out of town during business hours is also difficult.”

Vauxhall isn’t completely without financial services; there’s a small ATB office and a few cash machines with $3 fees attached.

The closest in-person services from a bank are more than 30 kilometres away in Taber.

While the use of online and mobile app banking has continued to grow, consumer advocate Sylvie De Bellefeuille says sometimes, when it comes to people’s money, there’s no substitute for human interaction. 

“When you call a bank, it’s not always easy. Sometimes it takes a lot of time and sometimes people just want to meet people face-to-face to make sure that they have the correct information.”

De Bellefeuille also sees a role for in-person services when it comes to fraud prevention.

“So going physically to a bank when the situation comes up may sometimes be a good idea.”

When CBC News asked CIBC why they are closing the Blairmore branch, the bank responded that the office “has experienced lower business volumes for some time, and the majority of our client transactions take place outside of a banking centre, through mobile, online and telephone banking.”

CBC News asked CIBC why it has been closing more branches in small Alberta towns than in urban centres, but the bank did not address that question specifically, saying, “the decision to close any of our banking centres is not taken lightly and we carefully consider all options before doing so.”

Asked whether CIBC customers in Blairmore will have fee-free access to ATMs at any of the other financial institutions remaining in town — a question the federal regulator suggests customers ask their banks in closure scenarios — CIBC’s spokesperson noted that clients can use their debit cards “to receive cash back at retailers where offered when making a purchase using their card. This feature provides convenient access to cash without needing to visit an ATM.”

The federal bank regulator, the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, has rules banks are required to follow when they close a branch.

They must give notice: six months if the branch is in a rural community and four months if it’s urban.

Banks have to provide information about how customers can move their accounts, and if someone affected by a closure requests a community meeting, the bank usually has to oblige, as it did in Blairmore in October.

But the regulator told CBC News that a bank’s decision to close a branch “is a business decision.” 

And according to the experiences of Robinson in Blairmore and Cawley in Vauxhall, it’s a decision that’s already made by the time the community finds out about it.

“People were very upset about the closure,” Robinson said.

“And now I think it’s like anything you go through: denial and then acceptance or just — can we really do anything about it?”