UK bank pass annual stress tests, says BoE

Eight major UK banks have passed annual capital stress tests and were well positioned to support households and businesses through a period of rising interest rates, the Bank of England said on Wednesday.

The examination checked if the lenders were holding enough reserves of cash banks to withstand shocks bigger than the global financial crisis of 2008 caused by malfeasance in the industry, leading to taxpayer bailouts for some lenders, including Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds and NatWest.

The scenario incorporated “persistently higher advanced economy inflation, increasing global interest rates, deep simultaneous recessions with materially higher unemployment in the UK and global economies, and sharp falls in asset prices”, the BoE said.

The lenders were Barclays, Lloyds, HSBC, NatWest, Santander UK, Standard Chartered, Nationwide Building Society and Virgin Money.

Reporting by Frank Prenesti for Sharecast.com