Bank branches lopped

BANKS in Spain’s rural areas are becoming hard to find.

Over the past year, Spain’s high street banks left another 121 municipalities with‐out branches despite agreeing to provide fi‐nancial inclusion for vulnerable groups.

According to the Bank of Spain, 4,618 of the country’s 8,131 municipalities ‐ 57 per cent ‐ no longer have a bank branch al ‐ though in practice, a few still have banking facilities. event to highlight outstanding firms in the financial services sector.

Following the Unicaja‐Liberbank merger, the Andalucia‐based bank has maintained offices under its own name through a fran‐chise system which did not show up in the Bank of Spain statistics.

Meanwhile, the province of Palencia in Castilla‐Leon is Spain’s worst‐hit province.

It its own words, “The Good Money Guide Awards aim to champion financial services firms that excel in innovation, product, and customer service.

“Each year thousands of clients tell us what they think to help others make smarter decisions about who to invest, trade and transfer currency with. They also provide valu‐able feedback to improve the online investing, trading, and currency transfer industry.”

Deciding the winners is based on professional testing, data and pricing analysis, to‐gether with customer feed‐back survey results. This year, 17,000 votes were cast to pick the final winners from the 62 companies that took part.

Currencies Direct is also up for the Business Moneyfacts Awards in April, where they’ve been shortlisted for two more accolades. Will the winning streak continue?

TESCO’S profits halved to £753 million (€852 million) in 2022.

The year was “incredibly tough for customers,” Tesco admitted as it dealt with “sig‐nificant operating‐cost infla‐tion” and wrote down the val‐ue of some properties.

The UK’s biggest retailer said sales rose 7.2 per cent to £65.7 billion (€74.3 billion) in the year to February 25. This included a 3.3 per cent increase at Tesco’s UK supermarkets, although it sold fewer items as shoppers chose their products carefully.

UK food sales rose by 4.6 per cent over the last year, led by the group’s own‐label ranges, while sales of its premi‐um Finest products increased by 7 per cent and its cheapest ‘Exclusively at Tesco’ items grew by 6 per cent.

The chain said the volume of items sold had fallen, partly be‐cause customers wasted less and used up leftovers but once Covid restrictions were eased, they were visiting restaurants and cafes more often, buying less to eat at home.