The overall UK financial services sector is characterized by a dominance of the six major groups: Lloyds Banking Group, Barclays, NatWest (formerly RBS), HSBC, Nationwide, and Santander. There are only a few mid-tier competitors of scale. UK Finance reported in 2019 that the six major banking groups combined held approximately £1.8 trillion of retail assets. In comparison, the mid-tier banking segment composed of 14 banks and building societies at that time held approximately £360 billion of assets in total. This dominance of the large UK players, and the associated challenges, were aptly illustrated by the Financial Times in a recent comparison between the UK and the US. Despite a consolidation of the US market in recent years, the four largest US banks hold just 35% of customer deposits. This percentage increases to well over 50% for the four largest UK banks.