The Banking Systems of Germany, the UK and Spain Form a Spatial Perspective: the UK Case
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A Service of Leibniz-Informationszentrum econstor Wirtschaft Leibniz Information Centre Make Your Publications Visible. zbw for Economics Flögel, Franz; Gärtner, Stefan Working Paper The banking systems of Germany, the UK and Spain form a spatial perspective: The UK case IAT Discussion Paper, No. 18/03 Provided in Cooperation with: Institute for Work and Technology (IAT), Westfälische Hochschule, University of Applied Sciences Suggested Citation: Flögel, Franz; Gärtner, Stefan (2018) : The banking systems of Germany, the UK and Spain form a spatial perspective: The UK case, IAT Discussion Paper, No. 18/03, Institut Arbeit und Technik (IAT), Gelsenkirchen This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/180380 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Documents in EconStor may be saved and copied for your Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. personal and scholarly purposes. 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Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, If the documents have been made available under an Open gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. www.econstor.eu The Banking Systems of Germany, the UK and Spain from a Spatial Perspective: The UK Case 2 The Banking Systems of Germany, the UK and Spain from a Spatial Perspective: The UK Case Summary As expected, this comparison of the German and the UK banking systems shows substantial differ- ences between the countries. In the UK, savings banks disappeared long ago and other regional banks have never become important in lending to business. Instead, the five large commercial banks dominate business lending. Hardly any short-distance lenders still currently exist in the UK according to our qualitative dis- tance classification of banks and other financial providers for small firms. The closure of the very last local savings bank in 2017 marks the preliminary end of traditional regional banking in the UK and indicates that the financial crisis indirectly challenges small and regional banks disproportionally. This is because the low interest rate environment and more complex banking regulations affect small and regional banks more, making it almost impossible for small standalone banks to survive. Problems in small firm finance have been discussed in the UK at least since the 1990s and government support has been given to community development financial institutions and credit unions in order to close the financial gap for small firms. Due to the financial crisis, access to finance has become increasingly difficult for small businesses, especially in remote regions, so the debate on how to reinvent local banking (and hence how to improve access to fi- nance) has gathered momentum. Three options are under discussion. The first is to create in one stroke a regional and public banking group with a substantial market share by restructuring the Royal Bank of Scot- land into a network of local and public banks. The second is to re-create regional banks on an entirely new basis with the help of a new association that would provide economies of scale and knowledge in order to enable local people to create their local banks. The third is to establish local banking by upscaling other financial providers, such as credit unions and responsible finance providers. Whether any of these options are realistic is difficult to say right now. One additional option that could improve SME finance are the so- called challenger banks, a type of bank unknown in Germany. These banks differ in terms of ownership, business model and regional market orientation, yet our findings suggest that they tend to operate on a more decentralised (short-distance) business model than large commercial banks. Keywords: comparing banking systems, SME finance in the UK, decentralised vs. centralised banking JEL classification: D43, E21, G01, G21, G38, R12 * Institute for Work and Technology, 0049 2091707 203, e-mail: [email protected] † Institute for Work and Technology, 0049 2091707 164, e-mail: [email protected] Contents A: INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................................ 5 B: THE UK BANKING STRUCTURE ...................................................................................................................... 8 1. BANKING STRUCTURE AND POLICY ........................................................................................................................... 8 2. BUSINESS LENDING BY CATEGORIES OF BANKS AND OTHER FINANCIAL PROVIDERS ............................................................ 10 Large banks (the big five) ............................................................................................................................. 10 Challenger banks .......................................................................................................................................... 12 Regional savings banks ................................................................................................................................. 12 Credit unions and responsible finance providers .......................................................................................... 13 3. FINANCIAL CENTRES AND BANKING ASSOCIATIONS ..................................................................................................... 15 C: DECISION-MAKING ..................................................................................................................................... 18 4. OPERATIONAL AND FUNCTIONAL DISTANCE AND ACCESS TO FINANCE IN THE UK .............................................................. 18 5. DECISION-MAKING PROCESS OF UK BANKS AND OTHER FINANCIAL PROVIDERS ................................................................ 20 Large banks (the big five) ............................................................................................................................. 21 Challenger banks and Airdrie Savings Bank ................................................................................................. 23 Non-bank lenders ......................................................................................................................................... 24 D: REGIONAL BANKS FOR THE UK? ................................................................................................................. 26 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................................................... 28 Despite the initiatives to create a common European financial market, the banking systems of the European States vary, especially with respect to the spatial concentration of banks and other financial in- stitutions (Klagge and Martin, 2005; Gärtner and Flögel, 2014; Wójcik and MacDonald-Korth, 2015). Map 1 shows substantial differences in the spatial allocation of bank headquarters for the Euro countries in 2014 and the UK in 2017. Austria, Germany, Ireland, Italy and the Netherlands have a rather decentralised allo- cation of headquarters. In contrast, France, Spain, Belgium and the UK are seen to be rather centralised in terms of bank headquarters. The existence or non-existence of regional banks tends to account for the visual difference between the European states that is apparent in Map 1. This paper investigates the diversity of the national banking systems of Europe from a spatial perspective by looking at decentralised and central- ised banking (Gärtner and Flögel, 2014; 2017). It is one of three papers of a research project sponsored by the Hans Böckler Foundation that compares Germany (Flögel and Gärtner, 2018), the UK and Spain (Gärtner and Fernandez, 2018). This paper discusses the development of the UK banking system and compares it with Spain and Germany, focusing on lending to enterprises by banks and other financial providers in the UK. In this context, we trace the disappearance and possible (re)establishment of regional banks. The rest of the introduction outlines the conceptual and methodological foundations of the research project. Map 1: Bank headquarters locations in the Euro countries in 2014 and the UK in 2017 Authors’ map, source: ECB (2014), Bank of England (2017) 5 The diversity of banking and financial systems is apparent when we look under the surface. Tradi- tionally, the structure of financial systems is approached by distinguishing between bank- and market- based systems (Allen and Gale, 2001; Demirgüc-Kunt and Levine, 2001; Hall and Soskice, 2001). However, misgivings about the suitability of this classification have emerged since the financial crisis of 2008 (Beyer, 2009; Hardie et al., 2013). There is a whole range of alternative taxonomies and concepts for distinguishing between financial systems (for an overview, see Gärtner, 2013).