By Mark Kleinman, City Editor
The principal lobbying group for British bankers is to examine plans for a consolidation of dozens of industry trade bodies following top-level talks between the country's biggest lenders.
Sky News has learnt that the chairmen of the five largest high street banks met last week to discuss proposals for the British Bankers' Association (BBA) to combine with peers such as the Payments Council and the UK Cards Association.
The chairmen, who include Sir David Walker of Barclays and Lloyds Banking Group's Lord Blackwell, are understood to have commissioned a working group to examine the issue, led by an independent third party.
The move follows concerns from some big banks about the level of subscriptions they pay for membership of myriad trade associations at a time when they are experiencing severe cost pressures across their businesses.
Insiders said on Thursday that the review was likely to last several months and predicted that it could lead to significant tensions between different trade bodies, with some ultimately expected to be subsumed into the BBA.
the focus of the review will be on organisations serving the retail banking sector, one said.
Sky News revealed in July that the BBA had begun internal discussions about potential mergers with the Payments Council and the UK Cards Association.
The UK Cards Association denied at the time that it was party to any formal talks.
The discussions come at a time of significant structural change in the banking industry and associated sectors, with a new payments industry regulator to be introduced by next April to oversee the infrastructure which processes £75 trillion in annual payments.
"The banks end up footing the bill for most of these bodies and it no longer makes sense for them all to exist on a standalone basis" said one insider.
In 2012, the BBA looked at a possible tie-up with the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) but the idea did not progress.
That followed the loss of the BBA's revenues from administering the Libor benchmark rates, a role it gave up in the wake of the manipulation scandal which cost the chairman and chief executive of Barclays their jobs.
The BBA previously generated millions of pounds each year from selling licences to data providers to allow them to publish Libor benchmark data.
Sources said that Libor accounted for roughly 20% of the BBA's revenue before oversight of the benchmarks switched to third parties last year.
Fees for membership of the BBA are paid on a sliding scale dictated by a bank's size, with major high street lenders such as Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland paying the largest sums.
Last year, the BBA received just over £7.5m in subscription fees, up from £6.2m in 2012.
A BBA spokesman declined to comment.
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