Banking on change: information systems and technologies in UK high street banking, 1919–1969

Abstract

This article looks at the experience of management of technological innovation and mechanisation by British financial institutions. It highlights the indigenous assessment of technology, reflecting on local and American influences in two types of business organisations within the financial sector to demonstrate the nature of responses and the timing of the introduction of new methods and machinery. The adoption of Information Technology (IT) and computer applications in particular play a crucial role, though one that is intimately connected with a strategic expansion of corporate business, this growth being reflected in terms of size of business and also territorial expansion, as each of the institutions considered here constructed a national network of retail branch outlets. Discussion of established literature for the high street banks is combined with archivally informed analysis of similar, but previously undocumented, developments on the part of building societies. By taking a long-term view of these developments in the twentieth century, and by comparing the experiences of two different sets of institutions, the article highlights the strategic factors that influenced the decisions taken by senior managers in their transformation of British retail financial services.

The history of information technology

“…Yates's work on the insurance industry provides the only extended treatment of the use of information technology in a single American industry. Bernardo Batiz‐Lazo and his colleagues have written a number of papers (Batiz‐Lazo, 2009; Batiz‐Lazo & Billings, 2007; Batiz‐Lazo & Boyns, 2004) about the co‐evolution of information technology and business operations in the banking industry, which collectively provide similar insights for another corner of the financial world. Other English language studies of computer use elsewhere include an examination of computerization in three Dutch institutions (de Wit, 1994), of an early airline reservation system (McKenney, Copeland, & Mason, 1995), in the British Railway Clearing House (Campbell‐Kelly, 1994), in the banking industry, and in various corners of the British government (Agar, 2003).…”

In Digital We Trust: The Computerisation of Retail Finance in Western Europe and North America

“…Indeed, there is evidence of networks of innovation spreading across the Atlantic dating to early modern capitalism (e.g. Meyer 2006) while, more recently, there was intense exchange of ideas around the introduction of computer technology between US and British financial intermediaries (see further Bátiz-Lazo and Wardley 2007). However, we cannot brush aside other competitive environments, although marginal to the construction of that continuity, where individual organisations were also successful in assimilating new technology to, first, speed up internal operations and, second, reconstruct and intensify the flow of information within and across organisations.…”

Review of periodical literature published in 2007

“…Studies of wholesaling are uncommon, but this year we have two: Manton notes that in 1945 the Labour Party was determined to nationalize the wholesaling industry and considers why it remained in private hands; and Quinn and Sparks explore the evolution of grocery wholesaling in Ireland and Britain since 1930, noting that the evolutionary pathways here differ from those seen in manufacturing. In financial services, Bátiz‐Lazo and Wardley examine technological innovation and mechanization by British banks and building societies; Billings and Capie use archival evidence to demonstrate that banks maintained much higher levels of capital in the half‐century before 1970 than implied by their published accounts, without reduced or less risky lending; and Austin and Uche examine the causes and consequences of the collusion between Barclays and the Bank of British West Africa in that region. Also in West Africa, Decker notes that British businesses created a publicity strategy in the 1950s that couched their presence in terms of a positive contribution to newly independent states' development, modernity, and industrialization, but, with the passage of time, felt compelled to ‘Africanize’ their corporate image.…”