It has today published a 65 page document "Personal current accounts and banking services to small and medium-sized enterprises: Decision on market investigation reference" which discloses almost nothing that we did not already know.
The entire pantomime now to play out is likely to be little more than an expensive and unnecessary distraction for the banking sector, at least so far as it relates to personal current accounts.
At the last count, UK retail banking customers can choose from 33 current account brands across 17 participating financial institutions signed up to seven day switching.
That figure is correct: 17. Not a misprint.
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Lord knows what this latest investigation will produce that is not already known.
The fact that only 2.5% of UK current account holders switched their account in the past 12 months is hardly justification for the CMA to interfere.
I heard the head of the CMA on the BBC this morning moaning that some customers pay about £400 a year in overdraft charges because they cannot find better deals.
Are we to believe that such customers are so dim that they cannot use moneysupermarket.com or check out a bank’s overdraft charges on a bank website?
The report laments the struggle faced by new entrants and challenger brands, conveniently overlooking the fact that among the former, TSB is punching above its weight. Among the latter, Halifax is the topping the table in terms of net switchers.
The report also laments that "customer engagement remains limited"
Who writes this rubbish? One assumes that the authors of the report fail to understand what constitutes customer engagement. The regularity of digital banking customers engagement with their banks via mobile banking apps – just one example – apparently counts for nothing.
No doubt there will be commentators welcoming the CMA action who will argue that the banks’ role is to support the real economy – conveniently forgetting that banks also have a role to their shareholders and a duty to attempt to make a profit.
If the market was so skewed in favour of the existing players – if the current account and SME markets were so hugely profitable – NAB would not have been toiling to dispose of its unloved Clydesdale/Yorkshire franchises.
The exercise reeks of a public sector agency that has little better to do with its time and overly keen to justify its existence with a fresh round of bank bashing.
There is after all an election in the offing.
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