ABSTRACT
This chapter surveys the main changes affecting the clearing banks since the 1930s. Three groups are taken to comprise the ‘clearers’: London clearing banks (LCBs), Scottish clearing banks (SCBs) and Northern Ireland banks (NIBs). The LCBs have been by far the largest of the three and, in fact, they have major shareholdings in both the NIBs and SCBs. Throughout the years since the thirties, it has been these three groups of clearing banks which have dominated retail banking in the various parts of the UK. Together with the building societies and savings banks, they are responsible for the bulk of deposit–gathering from the general public and through their chequeing, giro and other transfer facilities, they are the main providers of the country's money transmission mechanism. But the business of the clearers is not confined to retail banking, of course. They have either retained or actively developed an important presence in other areas of financial activity, too. It is for these reasons that, as for earlier periods, more attention is given here to studying the clearing banks than to any other particular type of financial institution. Moreover, for most of the post–war period, it was the clearing banks that bore the brunt of official attempts to regulate monetary and credit conditions, another reason to pay them particular attention.
