Jeff Salway: Troubled banking industry faces a high street revolution

Smack - banks levy unfair overdraft charges! Bang - banks aren't throwing mortgages around like confetti! Wallop - banks are shameless profiteers! The programme stated the obvious and added nothing fresh to the debate.

The BBC interviewed irate bank customers with a range of grievances, including high overdraft costs, poor customer service and their reluctance to lend. The impression was of general distaste regarding the UK's banks that goes some way to explaining why so few people put their money where their mouth is and take their business to a different brand. A lack of trust and confidence in the banking system is the overarching theme and this is the looming obstacle facing the new entrants to the market.

Less than four in ten consumers would consider switching their current account to a new banking brand despite widespread antipathy towards the existing providers, according to research by financial comparison site uSwitch.

The survey also found that almost one third reckon the new banks won't have enough experience or knowledge of banking - as if that's helped the present incumbents provide a flawless, well-oiled service - and 34 per cent said the new entrants would not be as established or secure as traditional banks.

Oddly, Panorama failed to mention the other brands waiting their turn to liven up the moribund banking market, most notably Tesco, Virgin Money and now "project new bank". Nor did it consider for a moment the existing alternatives to the big high street names, not least credit unions.

So what do the new entrants have to do to convince the average current account customer that they are worth switching to?

Metro Bank, opening in London, makes a great play of its basic proposition - solid cash interest rates, personal service, desks rather than cages, opening hours to suit working people - but it needs more than that.

In the current climate, the average products seem too in line with the mediocrity elsewhere on the high street, even if the focus on simple products and not conning customers into buying unsuitable products is a refreshing change.

What's interesting is that Metro Bank has an approach more in line with a conventional high street retailer than a bank, with a greater focus on providing benefits that people actually want. This is a ploy that Virgin Money, Tesco and other potential entrants, including retailers such as M&S, will doubtless adopt with greater success.

But what is it they need to provide? At the least, they need to share the following characteristics:

• Accessibility: increased Saturday openings have helped, but most branches are open only between around 9am and 5pm, when the bulk of their customers are in work. Similarly, online banking has revolutionised personal banking but it does not have to be at the expense of other options. Bank of Scotland customers can no longer use ATMs to pay bills or transfer money between accounts. Removing a convenient option and forcing people to pay for calls to phone banking, go online or queue in branches seems a retrograde step.

l Satisfying, not selling: providing what people want and need instead of designing products that only sell through underhand methods. The needs of shareholders and customers are not mutually exclusive.

l Service: always the biggest single grievance against banks. From over-reliance on automated phone systems to appalling standards of complaint handling, the average high street bank falls well short of meeting customer service standards considered the minimum in other industries.

l Simple products: as Metro Bank has grasped, selling 20 different savings accounts with only the newest customers offered the best rates is not treating customers fairly.

l Transparency: Making it clear to customers what products do and cost so they understand what they are buying and can effectively compare like-for-like.

The list could go on but the theme would be the same - it's all very simple, yet all very elusive in the current high street banking world.