The Evolution of Lending Relationships

In days gone by, businesses would use the same bank for life. In those days, the local bank manager had authority to make decisions locally and would base a lot of his/her decisions on the strength of the relationship, not just the numbers on a balance sheet.

Back then, loyalty to your bank was a 'thing'!

But banks are businesses too. They had to evolve, and with such fierce competition, had to look at cost saving strategies such as centralization .

Customers also had to evolve. The old model of being able to call up and get straight through to a bank decision maker is mostly gone. The casualty of this shift in bank/customer relationship is "loyalty".