As Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays and HBOS seek new funds from investors with varying degrees of desperation, it’s tempting to ask with regard to UK banks – where did it all go wrong?
UK retail banking has traditionally been a profitable but lazy business. Banks have made easy money by charging borrowers high interest rates while giving little or nothing to current account holders. Meanwhile customers have traditionally been inert, partly because they don’t believe they will get any better service by switching to another provider.
This laziness means that UK banks have long been laggards in terms of...
