The UK’s banks are not serving their public well. The EU Competition Commission and others, who regard it as the model for the banking system of, for instance, Germany and Italy, would do well to look at the evidence. An overemphasis on shareholders while ignoring a number of other stakeholders in society is not the best way forward.
Britons think that the banks are failing to provide adequate services: complaints to the Banking Codes Standards Board (BCSB) have reached record levels. The Competition Commission has found the banks to be operating a “complex monopoly” in the provision of bank account services to small and medium-sized enterprises. The banks are accused of punitive charging of people who fail to pay credit card debts on time and they are under investigation by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) for similar charging for overdrafts.
