A recent survey showed that people have lost a lot of faith in banks. The recent situation with Northern Rock is thought to be one of the main reasons for this loss of faith. According to the survey's results, almost a quarter of Brits say they don't trust lenders, and less than half of them say they can trust high street banks. When it was discovered that Northern Rock had taken a loan from the Bank of England, a lot of trouble and chaos broke out. This led to rumours that the bank was about to fail, and many of its 1.5 million savers took out billions of pounds worth of savings.
As a result of this situation, the Bank of England has made it clearer that customers' savings at Northern Rock and other banks that are in similar situations will be protected. But it seems that these promises haven't made people trust banks any more, since more than half of them say they no longer trust high street banks.
From the 2484 people who were asked, the survey found that only 46% of them now trust high street banks. Building societies did a little better, with 48% of people saying they had faith in them. Online banking has also taken a hit. Experts say this is because Northern Rock customers have less access to their online bank accounts, which also hurts this part of banking. The results of the survey show that only 25% of people now trust online banking.
One expert in the field said that people's trust in banking and finance was already pretty low, and that the recent problems with Northern Rock have made this lack of trust worse. Professionals say that the economy has hurt more than just the banking industry, though. Less consumer confidence has hurt lenders across the board in the financial industry. People think this could be because of problems in the whole financial sector, which have been caused by the credit crunch that started in the sub-prime sector in the United States and has had effects all over the world.
