6/26/2014 10:09:23 PM | less than a minute read

UK Banking body proposes relaxing challenger bank capital

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Gareth Jones

Co-Founder, FinTech Collective

Get in touch

Gareth Jones

Co-Founder, FinTech Collective

Banking reform is top of the agenda for Britain's political parties in the run-up to the 2015 election. Lack of competition helped contribute to some of the scandals that have hit UK banks in recent years - something the lawmakers now want to fix.

Scandals included the mis-selling of loan insurance, Britain's most expensive consumer scandal, which has so far cost banks more than 20 billion pounds ($34 billion) in compensation.

Britain's banking lobby has proposed relaxing requirements over the financial reserves that challenger banks have to hold, in an effort to improve competition. The British Bankers’ Association (BBA) said it had identified a number of areas where smaller “challenger banks” are handicapped compared to the more established lenders, including capital rules that often mean they must often hold disproportionately more.

www.telegraph.co.uk/...