A friend's mother recently went into a nursing home and they've faced the time consuming and at times emotional task of clearing the property prior to putting it on the market. I couldn't resist, 'Did you find anything valuable?' His response was in some ways surprising. 'It depends what you mean. We took twenty bags of shoes, ornaments and clothes to a charity shop and my mother was an avid collector of junk jewellery but amongst it all there were some gems. I found the stamps I was presented with on Investiture Day (a holiday to celebrate the investiture of the Prince of Wales) and some old photographs and letters my father sent home from Malaysia when he was in the RAF.'

I'll admit this wasn't quite what I was expecting. I checked the stamps on eBay and they're worth £1.50. This meant nothing to my friend as they were the stamps he was presented with after winning a race at an Investiture Day street party nearly fifty years ago. To him they were priceless.

It may be a tenuous link, but I think there is an important lesson in that there is often a significant gap between the price of something and the value people attach to it.

When it comes to the provision of financial services it is difficult to measure the value attached to receiving a service in a particular way. Over the years economists have tried with Cost Benefit Analysis studies, but it's well-nigh impossible to put a price on some things. If you look at branch closures for example, on the one side you can look at costs, but what impact will the closure have on customers and revenues? Don't underestimate the impact of branch closures. It's not just a case of what will it cost customers to carry out the transactions in a different way or a different location. We should also take into account the value they attach to doing business at their local branch and whether they may now transfer their business to another bank.

What value do you attach to those potential lost accounts or products? Savings accounts are a low cost source of funds for any bank. Older people are not just more likely to be attached to the branch, they also have significantly larger savings account balances. A recent study has shown that in the US, the median savings account balance for customers under the age of 35 is $1,580s, the equivalent figure for those aged between 55 and 64 is $8,500 and those over 75 have average balances of $11,000. This is a demographic, banks ignore at their peril. Is there a danger of 'throwing the baby out with the bath water'?

Before you get rid of services that people value, perhaps you need to consider how cheaply you can provide these services. Is there a danger of over-stating the case for closure? If a service is valued then perhaps it is worth keeping. Rather than disposing of a valued but expensive service, there is a strong case for considering more cost-effective options at the same location.

Paul Pester, CEO at TSB Bank, has been quoted as saying 'Yes customers are adopting mobile and digital banking at a pace we've never seen before, but the convenience of having a branch in a convenient location is as important as ever for customers.'

These comments are backed up by a report from Accenture that shows that although 24 percent of customers would consider a branchless bank, 90 percent believe they will continue to use branches and an increasing number believe the branch is the single most important channel.

Rather than signalling the end of bank branches, the effective introduction of new technologies is reinforcing the importance of the branch as part of an omni-channel approach to service delivery and enhancing opportunities for the human interaction that helps to build lasting, profitable relationships with customers.

It was Oscar Wilde who defined the cynic as “a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing”, at Glory we’re far from cynical about the future of bank branches. We are working with financial institutions worldwide to deliver branches that provide the services people want in the rapidly changing environment in which we all find ourselves.