The Provision of Retail Financial Services

The impact of developments in information technology upon the range of products which can be profitably marketed by financial services firms is here considered. Underlying the analysis is a conception of financial institutions such as banks as marketing inter‐mediaries, providing information and distributive services along with the financial products. Two routes are compared which are used by financial institutions to provide an expanded range of financial services: joint ventures and the financial supermarket. The strengths and weaknesses of both are examined.