Office of Fair Trading (OFT) and Competition Commission
Étude de cas : Office of Fair Trading (OFT) and Competition Commission. Recherche parmi 301 000+ dissertationsPar dissertation • 29 Avril 2013 • Étude de cas • 274 Mots (2 Pages) • 982 Vues
12. Since then the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) and Competition Commission (CC) have
conducted almost twenty inquiries into competition in different parts of the retail banking
market. Many of these inquiries and investigations have focused on particular segments of
the market, such as the personal current account market (2008), Cash ISAs (OFT, 2010)
store card credit services (OFT, 2004, CC, 2006). There have been two studies specifically
on SME banking, by the Competition Commission in 2002 and the Office of Fair Trading
in 2007. Most recently the OFT conducted a market study Review of barriers to entry,
expansion and exit in retail banking.8
There have also been a number of EU inquiries into
the banking sector, including the European Commission’s 2007 inquiry into retail banking.
The sheer number of inquiries and investigations suggests long–standing and widespread
concern about the effectiveness and nature of competition in the banking sector.
13. The market for retail banking is not like that for restaurant meals, groceries, clothes or
newspapers, where, as Lord Turner has noted, “the philosophy of free competition and free
customer choice easily produces good results”. In such markets the customer can assess the
quality and price of what is on offer and make an informed choice. In contrast, retail
banking sells many products such as long-term investment and insurance products which
are:
• long–term in nature, only revealing their quality many years hence;
• purchased only once or twice, thereby ruling out learning from repeat purchases;
• complex, which makes it difficult for consumers to assess.
Added to this—as in many other product markets—there is asymmetry of information and
knowledge between consumers and producers.
...