What's in issue seven: Are the Big Four banks too big? 

This issue of INTEREST highlights the lack of competition between the Big Four and the impact that branch closures have made on the local economies, communities, individual customers and the banks themselves:

• The four largest banks in the UK, Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds and NatWest between them, now control 85% of UK business accounts and 75% of current accounts.

• The average savings rate offered by the UK banks between 2008 and 2022 was just 1.52%, despite the average rate of inflation in that period sitting at a considerably higher 2.71%.

• Customers of the Big Four banks were seeing average returns of just 0.26% on their deposits even though inflation at that time was 1.5%. Which means, using Moneyfacts “Rules of Thumb”, saving rates should have been around 3.5%. Ten times more than they were paying. All this was done at the time they were closing branches and reducing services.

Issue eight published Friday 7 June 2024

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