Size of institutions in UK's banking system

Introduction

The UK banking system is the result of a continuous evolution over the last decades. From a few specialized banks that existed at the beginning of the past century, we can now talk about international conglomerates of banks and financial institutions with responsibilities in a large number of areas. The number of branches of those banks covers the entire surface of the country, but there are also the international banks with operations overseas, and the investment banks that are specialized only in a small number of operations. Bottom line, the UK banking is a complete system with banks and entities designed to cover a vast number of operations requested by the clients. 

The UK banking system today is based on communication, and an important change was recorded when the data processing system was moved from the territorial branches to the Central Processing unit of the bank. This way, the banks were specialized only in some operations, and today, there are only a reduced number of banks that are able to offer complete solutions to all the clients of the financial market. 

History

Small UK banking companies

The average citizen of UK is still found of the local bank. In other words, people prefer to go to the local bank for a credit, even if the offer of a national bank is better. It is a matter of tradition, and this tendency will never be changed. On the other hand, the financial recession affected exactly this segment of population, so the small local banks were also affected by this problem.

Medium sized banks

The new competition system forced the local banks to expand their operations beneath the borders of the local cities, so the regional banks covering the needs of companies and individuals appeared. It is hard to make a difference between the national recognized banks and the regional ones, but some specialists still prefer this classification.

National UK banking system

The banks that managed to introduce new informational and computerized systems grew beyond expectations, becoming recognized at a national level. Some of those banks managed to grow even more, based on successive and direct implementation of computerized systems. The national banking system is based on the existence of some independent PCs that have direct connections between them.  

Features

Investment banks

While the incomes generated by an investment bank are superior to the ones generated by an average bank, it seems like those banks are considered responsible for the financial recession. Usually, the investment banks have a reduced number of employees and only one headquarters, but we are talking about some specialists that have huge experience in their area of expertise, and that are paid way beyond the average pay in the industry. Those banks stay away from the commercial banking system, as they don’t need to advertise like the commercial banks. On the contrary, considering the bad publicity created around those institutions in the latest period, it seems like the banks try to avoid publicity in any case. 

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