Competition And Choice In Retail Banking

In this report the Treasury Committee concludes that the pre-conditions for effective competition in the retail banking market are not present. The Committee highlights in particular a lack of price transparency and comparability in the personal current account market, as well as the difficulty of switching. The report calls on the Government to make competition a primary objective of the new regulatory body, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). It also recommends a "public interest test" based on competition considerations for proposed future divestments of Government-held stakes in the banks. Given the continuing importance many consumers attach to a branch network, especially for current account services, the report notes that new entrants without access to an extensive branch network will be at a considerable disadvantage to established banks for the foreseeable future. This means that the Government needs to examine carefully where it can help improve the conditions for effective competition. New entry and reductions to barriers to entry and expansion may alone prove insufficient to tackle the problem of ineffective competition. As a result, the Committee urges the Independent Commission on Banking (ICB) to examine seriously whether there is a case for further structural reforms, over and above the RBS and Lloyds Banking Group divestments, to reduce concentration and promote competition. Solving the 'too big to fail' problem is critically important from a competition as well as a financial stability perspective.

Additional written evidence is contained in volume 3, available on the Commons website at www.parliament.uk/treascom

Government response to HC 612-I, session 2010-11 (ISBN 9780215558978)

The world of retail banking is changing. While previously a purely money-making entity, the industry has brought social responsibility onto its agenda, and the ground rules for success have altered. Traditional convictions, rules and values that have influenced all banking business in the past are brought into question by this shift, and banks are adopting bold strategies in order to win out over competitors. Taking both multidisciplinary and holistic approaches, Retail Banking is a comprehensive analysis of how traditional retail banks can meet the challenges of the emerging competitive landscape. It outlines the importance of considering the traditional fundamentals of banking and fitting them into the modern times, where technology is pervasive and developments in the macro and micro scenarios have changed the landscape of the industry. It highlights that modern retail banking is a conscious step away from the past, and suggests that for banks to succeed in this field, they must step away from ad-hoc initiatives and instead encourage loyalty and a life-long confidence in each of their customers. This book will be of interest to those with in interest in retail banking, bank management, business models and strategies and financial services.

"This new book on retail banking is both readable and innovative. Its analysis is unusually accessible in its style, and the book's conclusions and predictions will be rightly thought provoking. The customer is gaining real power and this new book's insights on the importance of leadership, the need to unleash creativity and to make a bank's IT and people resource work together more effectively for customer satisfaction are important pointers to the shape of future competitive differentiation." --Sir Mervyn Pedelty, Recently retired Chief Executive, The Co-operative Bank plc, smile, CIS and Co-operative Financial Services "A stimulating read. A readable and lively book that is always informative, sometimes controversial and invariably challenging. The authors don't expect readers to agree with it all, but the readers will undoubtedly gain some fresh insights and perspectives on the multiple issues facing management in a rapidly changing industry." --Chris Lendrum CBE, Recently retired Vice Chairman, Barclays Bank "This book is clear enough for the layman and thorough enough for any banker to obtain an excellent sense of the options for successful strategies for their retail businesses. The challenges of technology introduction, cost of production and scope of service are driving banks into responses increasingly similar to other industry sectors. These forces have been apparent for some years but are so evident now they can no longer be ignored. This book provides an excellent guide to mapping that future." --Joseph DeFeo, CEO, CLS Bank. "This is a useful guide to retail banking that provides a thought-provoking view on the state of The Art (of Better Retail Banking). Clearly retail banking can get better, and must! To steal an analogy from the conclusion, there is a sea change going on - consumers are looking more and more for greater simplicity and value, and so many banks are still making such heavy weather of it. This book does a good job of charting the current developments." -- Lindsay Sinclair, CEO, ING Direct UK. "A whistle-stop tour of all aspects of retail banking. This is a very readable and insightful real world mix of theory, strategy, tactics and practice. They have even managed to make banking sound exciting. But mostly they have been able to cut through the complexity to remind us all that success in retail banking is not just about finance and efficiency - it is about customers and staff, who are all too often forgotten about." --Craig Shannon, Executive Director - Marketing, Co-operative Financial Services. "The authors live up to their promise of providing managers and students with a clear exposition of the retail banking sector and how banks can confront the challenging future they face. This book is a practical manual with lots of useful advice. I was looking for new insights in this book - and I found them!" --Professor Adrian Payne, Professor of Services Marketing, Director, Centre for Services Management, Cranfield School of Management. "A key determinant of any organisation's success will be an enhanced understanding of 'value' as defined by customers, employees, shareholders and other stakeholders. Value can mean different things to these different groups, and this book has set itself the objective of identifying the approaches that will improve the value proposition for all of these interested parties. It achieves this objective." --Professor Steve Worthington, Faculty of Business and Economics, Monash University. "An enjoyable and useful read. It provides a good perspective on the role of IT and how IT suppliers and professionals need to contribute to future developments in retail banking strategy and implementation. It helps provide guidance for the significant challenges ahead for both suppl

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1954.

This study reinvestigates the theoretical relationship between competition in banking and banks' exposure to risk of failure. There is a large existing literature that concludes that when banks are confronted with increased competition, they rationally choose more risky portfolios. We briefly review this literature and argue that it has had a significant influence on regulators and central bankers, causing them to take a less favorable view of competition and encouraging anti-competitive consolidation as a response to banking instability. We then show that existing theoretical analyses of this topic are fragile, since they do not detect two fundamental risk-incentive mechanisms that operate in exactly the opposite direction, causing banks to aquire more risk per portfolios as their markets become more concentrated. We argue that these mechanisms should be essential ingredients of models of bank competition.

For academics, regulators and policymaker alike, it is crucial to measure financial sector competition by means of reliable, well-established methods. However, this is easier said than done. The goal of this Handbook is to provide a collection of state-of-the-art chapters to address this issue. The book consists of four parts, the first of which discusses the characteristics of various measures of financial sector competition. The second part includes several empirical studies on the level of, and trends in, competition across countries. The third part deals with the spillovers of market power to other sectors and the economy as a whole. Finally, the fourth part considers competition in banking submarkets and subsectors.