National Provincial Bank
| Industry | Banking |
|---|---|
| Fate | Merger with Westminster Bank |
| Successor | National Westminster Bank |
| Founded | 1833 |
| Defunct | 1970 |
| Headquarters | 15 Bishopsgate, London EC2 |
| Subsidiaries | District Bank Limited |
National Provincial Bank was a British retail bank which operated in England and Wales from 1833 until its merger into the National Westminster Bank in 1970; it continued to exist as a dormant non-trading company until it was voluntarily struck off the register and dissolved in 2016.
Considered one of the "Big Five," it expanded during the 19th and 20th centuries and took over a number of smaller banking companies. It was based on Bishopsgate, at the thoroughfare's junction with Threadneedle Street, in London.
The National Provincial Bank played a unique role in the development of commercial banking. Prior to the Act of 1826, English banks were permitted to have no more than six partners – hence the expression “private banks”. The only banks allowed to be were the Bank of England and the Scottish banks (which operated under a different legal system). The leading campaigner for change was Thomas Joplin a Newcastle timber merchant “with local experience of banking disasters” and an observer of the greater stability of the nearby Scottish banks. The Act of 1826 permitted the establishment of joint stock banks but note issue was only allowed outside a radius of 65 miles of London. The 1826 Act was followed by the creation of new provincial joint stock banks and conversions from existing private banks. Because of the prohibition on note issue in the London area, it was incorrectly assumed that the Act also prohibited joint stock banks themselves, an ambiguity that was removed by the Bank Charter Act of 1833.
What differentiated National Provincial was that it was established as a provincial bank but with a London head office. Moreover, it was specifically structured to be a branch banking enterprise prepared to concentrate on a large number of smaller accounts rather than a small number of large accounts. When Thomas Joplin discovered that the laws preventing the establishment of joint stock banks in Ireland had been repealed in 1824, he promoted the Irish Provincial Banking Company, to be based in London but with branches in all the principal towns in Ireland outside Dublin; this was to be a forerunner of Joplin’s English version. Joplin left the management of the Irish Bank in 1828. Financial support from his cousin George Angas was promised in 1829 and a company was formed in 1830. The first meeting resolved to establish a “system of banking …under the review of a central board in London [and] applied to the direction of country banking”. There were numerous delays but the National Provincial Bank of England was eventually launched in 1833. For more than thirty years the Bank operated as a country bank, with its headquarters in London, but not transacting banking business in the capital.
...
Wikipedia