Crowdfunding has passed a major milestone with the introduction of Financial Conduct Authority rules for the sector. Also called peer-to-peer lending, or P2P, it is a rapidly growing source of finance for small and start-up businesses. With small business lending by banks still weak, crowdfunding could assist broader-based economic recovery.

Yet banks still fail to view the sector as a strategic threat and regulation is painfully slow. With just a little more encouragement from politicians and regulators, crowdfunding could represent the first real competition for the high street banking model - a bigger threat than many of the new "challenger" banks.