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Blog: Swinton - from high street hero to high street heartbreak

broken-heart
Swinton could have closed 204 branches by next year after business review

Insurance Age content director Jonathan Swift reflects on Swinton's latest branch closures and puts it in some historical perspective

“The main business dealt with by the shops is insurance renewal. With most people preferring to use the phones these days, the stores only deal with 20% of our business, and it is declining.”

These words were reported by myself – then a cub reporter, a month into my career on Insurance Age’s sister title Post – in 1998 in reference to an AA spokesman commenting on the closure of all 142 of its shops, two years after shutting 100.

Tensions
I dug this out to illustrate that tensions between high

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