It’s time we bank customers started talking to each other in the queue

I’ve been interested in informal banking ever since, frustrated in a long Lloyds bank queue in the West End, I persuaded some American tourists queuing with me to exchange their dollars for my pounds at the rate of interest marked on the notice board. No customer is an island, as John Donne did not quite remark.

But today, when it comes to depositing funds and borrowing funds, our financial institutions are acting as though we customers were indeed islands. It’s time we started talking to each other in the queue.

Banks and building societies assume that they alone can make the link between those with money and those in need of money, taking their cut. But if they are too averse to risk, and take too big a cut, they should beware. The customer is capable — if the inducement grows — of learning new habits of unmediated financial intercourse.

The temptations to cut out the middle man have never been stronger.