List of Banks in The United Kingdom

List Of Banks In The United Kingdom

The table shows the main independent British retail banks, in order of market capitalization. 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 stratum of independent local banks. The list shrank further during 2008: Northern Rock was nationalized by the UK Government (now owned by Virgin Money), followed by Bradford & Bingley; Alliance & Leicester was acquired by Santander, who own Abbey. Lloyds TSB plc announced, on 18 September 2008, a confirmed agreement to take over HBOS plc.

• † The UK government owns a controlling stake of 84% of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS)'s ordinary shares, but the bank remains nominally independent of government
• †† The UK government owns a minority stake of 43% of the Lloyds Banking Group, with the bank remaining in the private sector.

The retail and commercial banking markets are dominated by Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, Royal Bank of Scotland Group and Spanish-owned Santander (most of these companies operate more than one banking brand in the UK). The fifth major UK-based bank, Standard Chartered, operates primarily in Asia and Africa.

There are a number of banking businesses owned by retail groups, such as:

• Co-operative Bank owned by The Co-operative Group.
• Harrods Bank owned by Harrods, a department store in London.
• Sainsbury's Bank: 50% owned by British supermarket company Sainsbury's and 50% owned by Lloyds Banking Group.
• Tesco Bank: owned by British supermarket company Tesco.
• M&S Bank owned by the British department and supermarket chain Marks and Spencer, operated through HSBC.

There are a small number of independent specialist or local banks. A full list is maintained by the FSA http://www.fsa.gov.uk/pubs/list_banks/2012/aug12.pdf this link is to the August 2012 version, the file name changes which each monthly revision and the directory with each calendar year.

Many of these are just a small fraction of the size of the smallest of the banks in the table above. These include: Airdrie Savings Bank, Aldermore, Arbuthnot Latham, C. Hoare & Co, CAF Bank (a bank for charities provided by Charities Aid Foundation), Charity Bank (a bank which is also a charity and supports other charities), Close Brothers Group, Duncan Lawrie Bank, Julian Hodge Bank, N M Rothschild & Sons, Raphaels Bank, Secure Trust Bank, Unity Trust Bank (a bank supporting social enterprise), Weatherbys. 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 many major building societies demutualised in the 1980s and 1990s and there has also been ongoing consolidation via mergers between societies. Halifax (now part of Lloyds Banking Group) and Abbey (now owned by Santander) were the two largest building societies. The remaining building societies which demutualised have all subsequently lost their independence, either through nationalisation or acquisition by other banks. See Building society for a list of the remaining building societies. Out of the remaining building societies, only Nationwide would be large enough to appear in the above table if it were a bank.