EXCLUSIVE: "A Healthy Dose Of Realism" - Andrew Caplan, Well Pharmacy in 'The Fintech Magazine'

Banking isn’t the only essential service to struggle to maintain a physical presence on the high street. Could it learn anything from pharmacy?

On the face of it, the banking industry and prescription pharmacies don’t have a lot in common. Under the surface, though, they share strikingly similar DNA. Where one deals in cash, capital and credit to help customers stay financially healthy, the other dispenses prescriptions, patient care and screening services to keep them physically fit.

They’re essential public services, and, as such, heavily regulated. Both handle huge volumes of sensitive, high-value assets, be they cash or life-changing medication. Both come under enormous government scrutiny as systemically important, privately owned industries – one tightly bound to the Department of Health, the other to the Treasury and the Bank of England.

Seen in this light, it is easy to see how they might both face similar operational challenges – be that changes in public policy, disruption from new technologies, workforce redeployment, rising costs, or shifting customer demographics and behaviours. And there are, of course, potentially devastating consequences should either fail in their duty of care to any individual.

“Getting something wrong in pharmacy is significant,” says Andrew Caplan, Chief Retail Officer at Well Pharmacy. “So standard operating procedures are part of our life.”
Well Pharmacy is the second largest retail pharmacy chain in the UK (behind Boots) and the largest independent chain, with more than 650 branches. It’s been owned by Bestway Healthchain Group since 2014 and also runs a wholesale division. There’s another similarity between businesses like this and banks – they both need to address the drift to online services and the cost pressure it puts on their bricks and mortar estates.

A 2025 survey by the National Pharmacy Association (NPA) and Community Pharmacy England (CPE) found that 63 per cent of pharmacies in England thought they were at risk of closing within 12 months. In March this year, the total number of community pharmacies in England fell below the critical 10,000 threshold, reaching just 9,944 and continue to close at the rate of two a week in England, according to the NPA. That compares to an average of eight bank branch closures a week across the UK. 

While there have been concerns for some time that this leaves vulnerable groups like the elderly unbanked, the alarming rate at which high street pharmacies are closing is also at risk of creating health deserts. Where pharmacists were once available for advice and to dispense prescriptions on every high street, now you’re lucky to find one within walking distance.

“Anybody that’s watched the NHS struggle in recent years will understand community pharmacy has also been under extreme financial pressure,” says Caplan. “So getting that measure right between operational efficiency and customer service is really, really important to us.”

Well is a pure-play pharmacy, in that it is committed to delivering prescription services and health care products to everyone who needs them. It hasnot diversified into other retail categories in the same ways that its rivals have.

In March, it announced a pre-tax loss of £20.75million for 2024-25, up £6.85milion on the year before, while its operating loss grew from £10.3million to £18.4million. Directors described it as a ‘challenging year’.

Although the company did see revenue climb from £728million to £736million over the same period, it illustrates how tough it is out there. So is there anything that community pharmacies like this can learn from banks? Or, indeed, anything banks can learn from pharmacies when it comes to navigating the in-real-life (IRL)/digital divide?

Changing times

The demise of the high street bank as a consequence of changing customer behaviour saw innovative fintech players step in and leverage technology to provide tailored financial services, something which, in turn, prompted many incumbents to revolutionise their legacy systems with digital banking apps, instant transfers and budgeting tools.

Well Pharmacy has faced similar challenges from digital-only players. Just as technology replaced the bank teller, patients can now order their own prescriptions at the touch of a button. So Well is undergoing a similar evolution to many established banks.

“We have a significant technology debt with legacy systems but, to some extent, it gives us an advantage,” says Caplan, “because you can then update almost everything in one go. We are in the process of moving to become Cloud-based. The vast majority of businesses, I think, already are today.”

Well Pharmacy has looked to automation to remove routine administrative tasks, mainly those linked to dispensing prescriptions, and bringing in greater accuracy and smoother processing to support the pharmacy teams, who can then focus on ‘doing what only they can do’, says Caplan, which is interacting with customers and patients.

“We have an expensive base cost with a pharmacist in every pharmacy working alongside support teams,” he says. “So a focus on delivering pharmacy services, whether that be NHS services or private services, and interacting with our customers and patients is really important.”

Key to this evolution is data. Fintechs used it intelligently to get to know their customers better in order to offer them bespoke services, and banks have responded in kind. Pharmacies are in a position to do the same, leveraging data and technology to offer patients and customers better services.

“We obviously have a lot of data within pharmacy. Every prescription we receive gives us information about patients, and we use that to support our customers to get the best use out of their medication,” explains Caplan.

He believes his industry is ‘still in the foothills of AI for community pharmacy’ but adds that Well Pharmacy is already beginning to use the technology in relation to two specific opportunities: giving pharmacists access to better advice, which they can then deliver to patients, and supporting those same clinicians’ personal and professional development, which in turn adds value to Well’s most important asset: its staff.

“We offer a wide range of NHS services but also private services – things like travel vaccinations,” explains Caplan. “An individual pharmacist might only deliver something like a Japanese encephalitis vaccination once in a while, so we’re looking at how we can use AI from trusted sources to support our teams and give them the confidence to answer questions that our patients might have.”

It’s not dissimilar to how AI assists a human advisor in a bank, able to pull up a detailed customer profile and access helpful information far more rapidly than any individual can, delivering better customer experience as a result. Well is also leveraging AI to support staff in their own wellbeing as well as to provide tailored training through its internal Complete Care programme. There is one key constraint that separates Well and other prescription pharmacies from banks, however, and that’s the prescription price cap.

In England, an NHS prescription fee is fixed at £9.90, while patients in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland pay nothing. People with long-term medical conditions and those who are pregnant, on benefits or over 60 are among others who qualify for free prescriptions, regardless of where they live.

“So you don’t compete on price, and you don’t compete on product, because it is what it is on the prescription,” says Caplan. “That means you have to compete on the service and experience that you give your patients, which is why getting people working at the top level of their qualification is really important.”

This logic drives Well’s doubling down on the physical experience.

“Our customers like the face-to-face interaction with a trusted professional,” saysCaplan. “Now we offer that online as well with a face-to-face consultation with pharmacists. But the importance to customers of being able to go into their local community pharmacy, see someone they’ve regularly seen, continue to get support and advice, is significant and shouldn’t be underestimated.

“It definitely demonstrates the value of bricks and mortar. The convenience is still really important.”

Legacy banks’ learning curve 

Financial services over the last decade or so have moved from being bank-centric to customer-centric, with fintechs offering their clients bespoke services for everything from instant transfers to intuitive, mobile interfaces and tailored financial advice. But the one thing neobanks generally don’t have is a physical presence.

It’s a point of difference over which they can’t compete. And legacy banks, having spent the past few years fleeing the high street and investing in online experiences, now appear to be acknowledging that.

Barclays, which has axed more than 80 per cent of its branches over the past 10 years, is now expanding its branch network, noting the value of that ‘physical presence’. Metro Bank, which in 2010 became the first new high street bank in the UK in 150 years, is also expanding its footprint after returning to profit last year, reaffirming that ‘our relationship banking service is at the heart of everything we do’. Moving forward, Well’s strategy is not dissimilar to Barclays and Metro Bank’s direction of travel – one that is both online and in-person, maximising the relative and unique strengths of technology and humans.

Caplan concludes: “That ability to create proper and true omni-channel journeys, where we can make life easier for our patients but [they can] still access bricks and mortar and their traditional community pharmacy, is our direction of travel.”