To their defence you should see the eye watering piles of regulations they have to comply with. A large international bank will typically have a whole team dedicated to just reading all the draft and final regulations that are coming every week.

Regulators state that they want more competition but in reality they don’t. Those regulations create massive barriers to entry. And regulators are wary about smaller players who will not have the scale to be financially robust, will be more likely to be a dodgy operation, and not to have all the established procedures of a large player.