Goldman Sachs needs to decide whether it wants Marcus to be a fully-fledged retail bank or a source of cheap funding for its investment bank, according to experts, after it closed its UK unit to new customers amid a spike in demand for saving products caused by the Covid-19 crisis.

On 10 June, Marcus paused new account openings for its easy access saving account as it approached the regulatory threshold of £25bn that would require Goldman to ring-fence the assets it holds, creating a separate legal entity with its own board. The news was first reported by Reuters.