The Enderby Bank of Montreal (BMO) officially closed doors Friday, April 26, but a local woman who fought to keep the branch open is celebrating a “small victory.”
BMO announced last fall that its Enderby branch would close permanently in six months time, and encouraged its clients to move to the Salmon Arm branch about a 25-minute drive away.
With the branch’s closure, Enderby now has only one financial institution, the Valley First Enderby and District Financial credit union.
Local resident Kelly Brown told The Morning Star that BMO was supposed to hold a consultation meeting with the community before announcing the closure, but that meeting never materialized.
Instead of accepting the loss of the bank, Brown started a petition to keep the branch open. More than 380 people responded to the petition, and while the bank did close, an arrangement was made to have a BMO bank machine set up in Askew’s. That bank machine was operational on April 27, one day after the branch’s closure.
Brown said BMO held a meeting with the community on Dec. 5 to help clients transition to telephone or online banking. Not many people showed up, she said, because they had been told that the decision had already been made to close the branch, “and that was the end of it.”
At the Dec. 5 meeting, residents were told they weren’t getting a bank machine.
However, Brown and Kathy Fabiche kept pushing for a bank machine at Askew’s, and got manager Dave Wallace on board with the idea.
Brown said the BMO branch had been in the community for over 100 years, and it had many senior clients who had been with the bank for decades who prefer to do their banking face-to-face. She said having to go to Salmon Arm was problematic, especially in the summer when the traffic increases, and in the winter when the roads are icy.
“I was really angry about how it was being done and the fact that they were going to just leave the community,” Brown said.
While she is disappointed that the branch has closed, she said she’s glad she fought to have the bank machine added to the community to make it easier for BMO clients to do their banking.
“It’s a small victory,” she said. “Sometimes you just have to speak up and you have to work really hard to be heard.”
Brown said since getting involved in this issue, she’s noticed big financial institutions like BMO are pulling out of other small communities. The Scotiabank in Lumby, for instance, is closing and moving to the Vernon Main Branch effective Sept. 12, leaving the community with no brick-and-mortar bank.
Brown said she was grateful to a couple staff members at the Enderby branch who advocated for a banking machine in the community, as well as all the people who signed the petition.
“They say everybody’s going online, but I don’t think they are,” Brown added, referring to online banking. “There’s still people that like to have a face-to-face in smaller communities.”
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