Here in Sweden it has been very clear for the last 20 years that banks consider anything non-digital to be legacy and aspects of banking that should be closed down to reduce costs. They know where the profits are and where it scales.
For the longest time I used to believe that it is because Sweden is first to embrace new "technology". I have now come to understand now that it is something completely different and it will come back to bite this country in the ass in the not too distant future. I would be surprised if our economy even survives another decade without some serious restructuring.
I can imagine how harder it is than in the USA. From the article: "The combination of lax regulations and customers not paying attention to the fine print of their box-leasing agreements allows many banks to deflect responsibility when valuables are damaged or go missing."
Consumer protection is usually is a hassle for business. But, it is needed if you expect companies to behave even close to what is the public expectation. I understand that for business the lax regulation in the USA and the complete lack of rights of consumers make easier to get profits, even if it's at the cost of your own customers.
> I have now come to understand now that it is something completely different ... I would be surprised if our economy even survives another decade without some serious restructuring.
These are very strong statements at the same time that quite vague. Did I miss something? Can you explain what do you mean?
I imagine that the self-storage business in the USA is a very low regulation business, much less than opening a restaurant for example. How is the regulation for a (non-bank) "safety deposit box" business in Sweden any different than a self-storage business?
According to Wikipedia[1], the USA has ~52,000 self-storage businesses whereas Sweden has only 112. So the USA has wildly more self-storage than Sweden on a per capita basis: one storage place for 6000 people vs 92000 in Sweden. Are regulations worse in Sweden because self-storage is not a thing?
Not saying that there aren't valid use cases, but I personally don't know a single person who is using one.
1. There is a gap in housing between when someone moves out of their old place and when they can move into their new one. So they need to store all their stuff for a while.
2. Someone has a nice hardwood tree taken down in their yard and they want to keep the wood, but they don't want their garage /workshop to be full of drying wood.
3. Bulky outdoor sports equipment. Storing your kayak, etc. in your urban apartment may not be an efficient use of space.
4. If you are in business for yourself, you may need a small amount of warehouse space. The easiest way to get that in the US? Self storage.
6. Someone is going to be traveling/in the military/in the hospital/in jail/homeless for a while and can't or doesn't want to keep paying full rent just to store their stuff.
7. An older couple have houseful of truly nice furniture and/or tools but are moving to retirement home. Their kids/grandkids want the family heirlooms but don't have room for them - yet.
Do you have some additional thoughts on what this "something completely different" is? I'm a Norwegian and follow the political developments in Sweden with great interest, and sometimes a degree of morbid fascination.
I get the impression that, among other things, there is a push towards greater surveillance and tracking of everybody's spending behaviors, coupled with a political correctness craze that seems to divert the attention from more central issues. Would be curious if you had any thoughts on the powers that drive these developments, or whether there is anything related that's not too obvious.
Negative interest rates: https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonconstable/2019/01/31/the-u...
This has really just begun, things are going to become more and more nonsensical like people getting paid interest to take out a mortgage and paying the bank interest on their deposits. Both are already happening to a limited extent in Denmark:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-23/bankers-s...
I also used to have a safe in my previous apartment (with less valuable papers), had a break-in and they didn't bother opening it there, they took the whole thing weighing 40-ish kg.
So where am I supposed to store such kind of valuables now?
F*ing stupid government.
Aren't these kinds of documents just representations of the fact in Norway? That is, the document itself isn't important and you can just request a new one when needed?
Check out the UK's Windrush scandal for example (named for the Empire Windrush, a boat that brought the first of thousands of Carribean immigrants to Britain in the late 1940s). A government department destroyed the records of who it invited to come here, and then a subsequent government insisted that if people didn't have proof it had no way to be sure they weren't illegal immigrants and so they should be deported under what it called the "Hostile environment policy"! In some cases there are old people, grand parents and great-grandparents, worked in the UK all their lives and then declared "illegal" and sent "home" to a country they'd left as kids because the government deliberately destroyed its own records. Outrageous.
Anyway, I wouldn't even know what documents to store as I simply don't have too many of them -- even birth certificates aren't a thing here.
And then, administrative f*ups are not without precedent as exemplified here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Erased
IIRC the cover letter I got with "statsborgerbrevet", it is non-reissuable. It is handed out only to you in person, you can't even send your lawyer.
In the unlikely case I'd need a new birth certificate, I'd, I'd have to travel to my country of birth. Hassle.
Call me old-fashioned, but paper is still the best archival/backup medium for stuff of real importance.
Lesson learned.
If all the banks are dropping this service, there's probably other companies that will start doing it.
Could you drive to Sweden and store them there if you don't need them that often?
Someone mention Sweden isn't much better:
Do you think they would have taken it had they known what was in it?
I have some papers, and some data discs, that would be of no use to a burglar but that I would rather not lose. I keep them in a small safe (14 kg, 10 liter). I keep it out in the open and unlocked. The hope is that if it draws a burglar's attention, they will see that the contents are useless and either ignore it, or if they decide they like the safe itself dump the content and just take the safe.
If it were locked they might imagine all kinds of valuable, untraceable things I could be keeping.
So why even have a safe if I don't lock it? Because it is rated to keep papers and CD/DVD discs safe for one hour in a 1700℉ (930℃) fire.
No, they wouldn't. Like in your case, it contained some grade transcripts, PhD diploma (of sentimental value; no the university doesn't reissue them), and a valid passport from my previous country (which I revoked immediately... and PI in that passport had no relation to my PI in Norway.) and a backup disk with uncritical stuff.
> So why even have a safe if I don't lock it? Because it is rated to keep papers and CD/DVD discs safe for one hour in a 1700℉ (930℃) fire.
Again, fire-resistance was my motivation as well. But the door was sitting loose (i.e., it sat fast only when locked) and I was in doubt of how much fire protection it would offer if left unlocked.
In the days when banks needed branch networks and physical money the barriers to entry were high. We're now getting to the point where new entrants can, and increasingly are entering the marketplace.
I suppose you could argue that these new entrants are going to enter the online only marketplace anyway, but then how are the established banks going to differentiate themselves? What advantages do they have? Apart from a legacy Cobol codebase.