5. Statement by the Minister for Economy: Supporting the creation of a Community Bank for Wales

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:32 pm on 14 December 2021.

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Photo of Vaughan Gething Vaughan Gething Labour 4:32, 14 December 2021

Well, I'm sure the good people at Banc Cambria will have heard you before today, as well as today, and I know that they’ll be taking an interest in today’s debate across the Senedd. Look, we expect to receive an investment proposal over the next calendar year, so during 2022, and we’ll then need to go through our due diligence exercise, as I’ve indicated before. So, I can’t give you an exact timescale for that. But the outline expectation is that before the end of 2023 we might see branches starting to open. We’ll need to see the detail of that and where they’ll be in the investment proposal, and it is a matter for Banc Cambria to bring their proposal forward and to set out how they would look to site new branches and where they would start. I’m sure that there will be other bids, but, as I say, the Member’s been very consistent about Banc Cambria.

It is worth pointing out, when I talked earlier about agency agreements, one of the things that Banc Cambria have already done is to do some work with the Cambrian Credit Union in north Wales, to look at a potential agency agreement that again may help to spread the reach of those services and to do so in a way that is a genuine partnership, rather than a competition with credit union services as well. There is a range of things that come from that, and that’s why I tried to set out that I look forward to coming back with more detail to generate the establishment of a branch, and it will then neatly segue into the social justice and community banking sector in a way that I think the Minister for Social Justice would then become the lead Minister, once it’s properly established.