Banks of the United Kingdom: Encyclopedia II - Banks of the United Kingdom - Independent British banks

Banks of the United Kingdom - Independent British banks

The table shows the main independent British banks. The list is quite short as British banking has been highly consolidated since the early 20th century. Unlike some other major economies, the UK does not have a major strata of independent local banks.

There are however a small number of independent specialist or local banks. There are all just a small fraction of the size of the smallest of the banks in the table above: Airdrie Savings Bank, C. Hoare & Co, Close Brothers Group, Julian Hodge Bank, N M Rothschild & Sons. There is also a government run savings bank called National Savings and Investments.

The other main class of consumer financial service organisation in the United Kingdom is the building society, but the building society sector is much smaller than it used to be as most major building societies demutualised in the 1980s and 1990s. Halifax (now part of HBOS) and Abbey National (now foreign owned) were the two largest building societies. Of the banks listed in the table above, Alliance & Leicester, Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley are former building societies. Several other building societies were taken over after they demutualised. See the building society article for a list of the largest remaining building societies. Only the Nationwide is larger than any of the banks in the table above.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Independent British banks", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki