My bank phoned me up the other day to ask me how I was doing. Nice guys. Was I happy with the service? Pretty much. Did I know I could access my account on the internet? Every week, I said. Did I want to know any information about the wide range of services on offer, including attractive rates on loans and mortgages, well-priced travel, home and life insurance, the best credit card in the market, a unit trust, ISA or the savings account with a special offer? No thanks, but cheers for asking.

I put the phone down with a smile. My first experience of cross-selling had been a breeze. Cross-selling is the buzz word in banking at the moment. Banks want to increase the revenue they make from each of their customers by selling them lots of different financial 'products', in addition to the normal services – sweat the assets a bit.

There was once a time when a bank was a fairly simple beast. You deposited your money with them, and then took it out again. Before . . .  read »