Safety first: UK set to keep ring-fencing but may ease rules

There is also pressure to make changes to tackle banks’ overexposure to retail debt due to the rules

When big UK banks began the process of ring-fencing local retail banking, many in the industry fretted that the lenders’ markets businesses might not survive. The fear was that, without access to cheap deposit funding, they would not be able to compete globally and provide attractively priced services to large corporate clients.

Fast-forward to today – two-and-a-half years since ring-fencing was implemented – and there is little evidence those worries were justified. Granted, the monetary and