State 10 different types of services provided by a typical retail bank for its corporate customers.

The group of retail banks comprises a rather diverse set of institutions which vary substantially in terms of size.

Some of the institutions, notably the London clearing banks, have been es­tablished as banks for a very long time: others for a relatively short lime, one example being the Abbey National which has been a bank only since July 1989, a consequence of its conversion from a mutual building society to plc status. In 1997, Halifax plc was formed, as the building society became a retail bank.

The scope of the activities of the institutions varies substantially. The largest clearing banks, for example, all have very extensive wholesale activities, while those of the Yorkshire Bank, for instance, are much more limited. Abbey National plc, unsurprisingly in view of the recent conversion from mutual building society status, has activities that are more akin to building societies than to the other banks in the group. (The Banking Department of the Bank of England has a very different set of activities from the other retail banks in the group.

Despite these differences, all the institutions offer banking services at a retail level, which involves large numbers of low-value transactions. All the institutions have large branch networks, although in the case of Girobank plc, its branch network consists of post offices rat her than being under its direct control.

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