http://www.bbc.com/news/business-19940642

Almost anyone's a safer bet customer-wise than Santander...

The UK branch of Santander are probably safer than the Head office but Virgin might be another mistake. They use leverage so could be as risky as RBS.

Santander are pissing me off at the moment with our mortgage.
They've taken an already inconvenient way of making overpayments and made it even less convenient.
When my fixed period runs out I'll be moving to someone else.
MHBS were way better.

I think that we have too many big banks and we really need to break them up and not allow any new big banks. Force all of them to reduce the numbers of branches and customers that they cover. We need much more competition between banks.

You couldn't do that in Belfast, the banks are so small and so far apart outside the city centre you'd be doing competition a great disservice

Yes but I doubt that the Ulster Bank or the other banks would even be large enough to meet the break up threshold. It would however force the big banks to either sell off branches to new banks or create new banks. IIRC Ulster bank was part of Nat West which was part of RBS. So simply hive off Ulster Bank as a separate bank. The end result should be more competition and allow smaller banks to compete with the formerly big banks.

I seriously doubt they'd survive 'on their own', especially over here

They existed before why not again?


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So did local shops

Yes but I still support local shops.



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most people dont. they say "oh we want local shops, wahere have they all gone", just before they go and shop at tescoes, Sainsburys et al

Ain't that the truth - and I'm as guilty of such nimbyism as the next man. It's hard to go against a lifetime's training to be a tight-arse!

My local butcher is actually as cheap as the local supermarket plus I get brilliant service. The greengrocer has a much better choice but is more expensive. Though since it is very local I can get only what I need so there is no waste. So it is more economical because of that.

1) Less branches mean less choice locally.
2) You can't force people not to bank with a certain bank. No bank will ever say "sorry we're full".

Not really if Barclays was restricted to 600 branches what would it do with those that it has to get rid off. It the law bans closure of branches then either new banks could spring up or some of the branches be sold to other banks. It could sell off 100 branches in a region to a new bank it creates and then floats. Customers could then migrate to other banks or transfer their account to another branch within the same bank. As for the "We are too full" argument there could be a wide range of customer numbers before any changes are imposed. For example if a bank has say three branches but 1million customers should it be forced to sell of a branch? Though if a bank has 10 million customers maybe it should be broken up. The banks could decide how they want to break themselves up. Of course not but what we really need is far more branches on the high street and so if a banks closes a branch there will be plenty of alternative banks that can take the customer, but with a ban on closures they will have to sell the branch to a competitor and many of its customers will move to the new bank for convenience. Any solution has to be thought out but ultimately we need smaller banks and far more competition.