Public ‘more disillusioned than ever’ about banking

Nearly three-quarters – 71 per cent – of people surveyed by Which? do not think banks have learnt their lesson from the financial crisis, up from 61 per cent in September last year.

Consumers have low expectations for a parliamentary inquiry into banking ethics, with only 26 per cent confident that it will lead to positive change among the UK’s lenders.

The survey was published on the fifth anniversary of the start of the credit crunch, the subject of the now well-known phrase from ex-Northern Rock chief Adam Applegarth.

On August 9 2007, the final wake-up call to the world’s banking system occurred after many early warnings over toxic debt.

“Sub-prime” was about to enter the vocabulary.

France’s biggest bank, BNP Paribas, had been forced to suspend three of its funds with major exposure to bonds backed by US sub-prime mortgages – it was unable to value them because the market for these products, or “securities”, had dried up completely.

Default levels among high-risk US borrowers had soared as the US Federal Reserve hiked interest rates to 5.25 per cent.

This shattered confidence in the bonds, which were used by most banks as collateral for the commercial paper they used as a source of short-term funding.

There had been early signs of the crisis – notably the first-ever profit warning from HSBC in February and the collapse of two Bear Stearns hedge funds in July.

But BNP caused other banks, concerned by the possibility of more bad debts, to cut back on everyday lending to each other by raising their own interbank rates – and so began the credit crunch.

Since then, the economy has suffered two recessions and consumers have been hit by a series of bank scandals, which have further exposed the broken culture and mismanagement in UK banking.

Which? chief executive Peter Vicary-Smith said: “Five years on from the beginning of the financial crisis, public confidence in the banking industry is at an all time low, with a series of scandals exposing mis-management and corruption at the very heart of the banking system that have cost UK consumers dear.”

Since the crunch, house prices have plunged, consumer confidence has plummeted and prices and unemployment have risen.

The Bank of England slashed interest rates to 0.5 per cent and has held them since at the historic low since March 2009 and has also pumped £375bn of emergency cash into the economy to kick-start recovery. But the economy continues to falter as the country struggles to grow under the tough austerity measures drawn up by Chancellor George Osborne.