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Join on Telegram Laayoune – The number of traditional bank agencies in Morocco has significantly decreased for the 3rd consecutive year, the country’s central bank said in its latest annual report.
In the report, Bank Al-Maghrib (BAM) said the number of bank branches in Morocco fell to 6,056 in 2021, a decrease of 117 from the previous year, when the number was 6,173.
The report also mentions that in 2020, the number of active bank branches fell by 146 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The primary cause of this reduction, according to experts, is the increasing digitization of banking services. Physical banking agencies are becoming redundant as customers rely more on digital banking applications, which makes it easier than traditional agencies to carry out transactions and casual banking operations.
According to BAM’s report, the number of banking agencies in Morocco has gradually shrunk in the past two years amid many local bank’s embrace of the e-banking sector to fully digitize the customer experience.
According to recent data from the World Bank, 17% of Moroccans over the age of 15 use digital payment methods, whereas only 1.6% of the population makes online purchases.
But the rapid digitization of the banking sector in Morocco is not the only reason for the closure of banking agencies across the country.
The COVID-19 pandemic is another factor in the rapid decline in the relevance of traditional banks, the report documented. As successive COVID lockdowns between 2020-21 considerably limited the movement of customers, the decrease of clientele traffic caused many banks to definitively or temporarily close their inactive branches.
