The British Bankers’ Association recently released their 27th annual Abstract, detailing the myriad statistics banks have gathered over the past twelve months. The resource is authoritative and exhaustive, detailing the changes that the business bank account industry has gone through while weathering the worldwide economic recession.
Despite the dire financial straits the global economy has been going through, an analysis of the Abstract reveals that the UK banking industry, while indeed undergoing radical changes, is still conducting an enormous volume of business on behalf of its customers.
Many of the figures the abstract provides on the activities of UK banks include the state of bank assets, the volume of business loan lending, mortgages, data on current accounts, and information on debit cards and credit cards. It even details the number of ATMs currently in operation. All this information was compiled from trends over the past 2009 calendar year.
Included in these trends is the recognition that while the rate of borrowing for mortgages has fallen, customers seem to be more willing to either pay down their debt (if not pay it off completely) and also to increase the amount of funds deposited into their savings accounts. In the overall financial activity in the UK, banks are accounting for an increasing proportion of this activity, the Abstract states.
Other information presented in the abstract includes a breakdown of the volume of banking transactions that occur in an average ten minute period. Among the more interesting numbers are those related to small business bank account holders: every ten minutes there is an additional £17,000 of financial support made available by banks for small business owners.
Other noteworthy transactions include that 35,000 people use the Internet to access their online banking, 38,000 retail purchases are made within the UK by credit card holders, and ten people open new bank accounts, which can be accessed either in post offices or in branches in an effort for banks to improve their financial inclusion.
The 27th Annual 0Abstract of Banking Statistics is available for purchase from the BBA, either online or in downloadable PDF format.