OFT to review barriers to enter UK banking sector
The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has today announced a wide-ranging review of the various barriers to entry for the UK banking sector. This comes at a time when the UK government, and the previous government, is looking to increase competition on the high street and competition in the UK banking arena in particular. There are specific areas which the OFT will look at including the regulatory environment, access to payment systems, branch networks and other issues impacting on the UK banking arena.
There is concern that if barriers to entry are too high then competition in the sector and the development of the sector will be impacted in the future. When you consider that the UK banking arena has changed significantly over the last 24 months there is a need to allow new blood into the sector as well as allowing competition to expand and develop.
The proposed sale of the Royal Bank of Scotland network of branches is ongoing although at this moment in time it is unclear as to who could be the new face on the high street. It was hoped that Virgin Money would be a prominent player in the auction but Richard Branson has been forced to withdraw.
Share this..
Related stories
Consumers losing £200 per year in interest
Millions of Britons are failing to capitalise on the chance to maximise their savings by choosing current accounts which do not offer them market-leading rates, it has been claimed. Price comparison site moneysupermarket.com asked a sample of over 4,000 consumers to identify the current accounts with the best rates of interest. It was found that 73 per cent failed to name Alliance & Leicester, Abb...
Read MoreContactless payments treble
06/02/2015 The number of UK debit card holders using contactless technology to make payments has more than tripled in a year, according to data from the UK card association. During 2014, people using contactless technology spent a total of £2.32 billion via contactless payments. This is compared to £653 million spent in 2013. One of the most popular places to use contactless technolog...
Read MoreSwitch Guarantee causes 1.2m bank account switches
15/10/2014 1.2 million bank accounts were switched this year, helped by a government backed scheme created to generate more competition in the bank account market. The “switch guarantee” brought in new regulations, where consumers can now move their bank account to another provider and are guaranteed to have all existing incoming and outgoing payments transferred from their old account...
Read MoreWhat happens now with the Chelsea and Yorkshire building society merger?
Letters of explanation will be sent to Yorkshire and Chelsea building society members within the next 10 days explaining exactly what is on the table and what their voting options are. At least 75% of savers and 50% of borrowers must vote in favour of the deal for it to go ahead, at which point the transaction would be put to the Financial Services Authority (FSA) for clearance. The merged oper...
Read MoreWill the HBOS saga ever end?
As the Scottish government continue to cause problems for the Lloyds TSB bank and HBOS merger this has attracted a furious response from HBOS which is accusing the Scottish government of using the company as a political pawn. Members of the Scottish parliament have been very vocal in their opinion that one or more alternative bids will appear over the next couple of weeks and this has a serious ch...
Read More