Page "Trustee Savings Bank" Paragraph 12

Although most customers of trustee savings banks were lower middle-and working-class, and had little need for cheques or cheque guarantee cards, regulatory innovations which allowed the TSBs to diversify their business threatened to erode the deposit base of the clearing banks.

But this potential diversification was limited by the over-restrictive central control by the Exchequer, the National Debt Commissioners and the Trustee Savings Bank Inspection Committee.

This type of central control had been designed both to guarantee depositors that the savings banks would remain a secure alternative for their deposits and, by standardising general interest rates and regulations, to make it possible for local trustees to work autonomously.