Best bank: Lloyds Banking Group
As it entered the final stages of a five-year plan, Lloyds Banking Group combined strong financial performance with clear improvements in digital capabilities and customer experience in 2025.
The group delivered £18.3 billion of net income during the year, up from £17.1 billion in 2024, alongside £22 billion of lending growth and nearly £14 billion of deposit growth. It has maintained disciplined cost management while reinvesting in technology, data and people.
With 23 million digitally active customers and seven billion logins a year, 85% of personal current accounts are now opened through the app. The bank remains the UK’s leading mortgage lender, providing £17 billion to more than 70,000 first-time buyers in 2025, while expanding its First Time Buyer Boost mortgage. The group has further grown its savings and investments propositions, with more than 3.5 million new savings accounts opened in 2025 and £7.5 billion placed into ISAs.
The bank’s in-app financial ecosystem is increasingly combining lending with other services. An example is its Eco Home Hub, including a new partnership with Octopus Energy to support heat pump installation, and a Bill Switcher tool developed with ApTap. It also launched in-app travel booking in partnership with Hopper. Meanwhile, 12 million customers now use Lloyds’ credit score tool, and its benefits calculator has identified tens of millions of pounds in potential support.
Data and AI development included an in-app financial assistant for personalised insights on spending, saving and investing – and a growing use of open banking data to automate affordability assessments and improve credit decisioning, including for customers with limited credit histories. The bank built a new machine learning and generative AI platform using Google Cloud’s Vertex AI, with more than 300 data scientists and AI developers already using the platform last year, including developing an algorithm to speed up income verification in mortgage applications.
By the end of 2025, more was in the pipeline – ranging from a new in-app rewards hub to an in-app car admin tool and a new internal platform for building AI agents.
Best digital bank: Starling Bank
Starling Bank has made significant strides in embedding artificial intelligence into its UK digital banking proposition, shifting its strategy from simple digital accessibility toward proactive financial empowerment.
Central to this shift was the integration of Google’s large-language model Gemini directly into its core banking stack. Built on this foundation, Starling unveiled Spending Intelligence in June 2025, a UK-first conversational tool that lets customers ask natural-language questions and receive instant, contextual answers.
The same generative-AI backbone also underpins Scam Intelligence, introduced in October 2025. The feature applies image-recognition and Gemini-powered analysis to online-marketplace listings, flagging suspicious pricing or low-quality photos before a payment leaves the account – a proactive step credited with tripling the number of cancelled scam payments in early tests.
Starling combined these AI breakthroughs with product innovations that deepened customer engagement. Its Easy Saver account, embedded seamlessly in-app, attracted £12.1 billion of deposits by offering competitive rates without sacrificing user experience. Enhanced onboarding, bolstered by AI-driven document checks and call summarisation, lifted approval rates by more than 10%, while maintaining the bank’s hallmark 24/7 human support.
For small businesses, the bank’s 2025 acquisition of accounting start-up Ember delivered the UK’s only free, HMRC-recognised Making Tax Digital tool inside a banking app. Its newly launched Tap to Pay feature turned any modern smartphone into a contactless terminal, and future-dated bulk-payment capability enabled SMEs to automate complex payroll and supplier runs weeks ahead, reducing manual overheads.
Starling exported its technology through Engine by Starling, a cloud-native SaaS core that powers third-party banks while funding domestic innovation. The platform underpinned April 2025’s full public launch of Salt Bank, Romania’s first mobile-only lender, and February 2025’s debut of AMP Bank GO for Australian micro-businesses.
Best bank for ESG: Barclays
Barclays ended 2025 having facilitated a cumulative $260.7 billion of sustainable and transition finance since the start of 2023 – a 61% increase over the year and more than a quarter of the way towards its $1 trillion target for 2030.
Undoubtedly an international bank, much of that momentum is still anchored in the UK, where the bank holds leading positions in domestic sustainable debt, has grown project finance threefold since 2020 and continues to decarbonise its own operations faster than planned. A refreshed set of frameworks, products and training sits alongside the financing, giving the strategy reach across the corporate, retail and markets businesses.
In UK capital markets, Barclays reports first-place rankings for both UK ESG bonds and UK sustainability-labelled bonds in 2025, having worked on every green bond priced by the UK water sector during the year. Its project finance teams took lead roles across greenfield UK fixed-bottom offshore wind, including the £2.7 billion ($3.6 billion) Inch Cape financing off the Scottish coast and the £3.6 billion East Anglia 3 wind farm off Suffolk. In social housing, a £50 million retrofit facility for housing association Vivid was the first drawn under the National Wealth Fund’s £1.3 billion retrofit guarantee programme.
Retail lending scaled in parallel. The Green Home Mortgage has now advanced £7.1 billion since 2018, including £2.4 billion in 2025, and sustainable deposits, a fee-free green loan and farm transition finance have joined the product suite over the year. The bank also co-chaired the government-backed Willow Review into how UK SMEs can benefit financially from sustainability.
On its own footprint, Barclays cut Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 97% against a 2018 baseline, beyond its 90% target, and sourced 100% renewable electricity across its property portfolio.
Through Barclays Climate Ventures, it has committed £274 million to more than 20 climate technology companies, £71 million of it in 2025. Independent ratings validate its progress, with Sustainalytics upgrading Barclays to a low-risk 11.2 from 21.7, alongside an existing AA from MSCI and an A- from CDP.
Best investment bank: Barclays
The claim that Barclays is the only UK-based global investment bank is not merely a positioning statement – it is a structural truth that underpins everything the bank delivered in 2025. Across debt, equity, M&A, leveraged finance and markets, Barclays demonstrated a breadth and consistency of performance that no domestic competitor was able to match, and few international rivals can replicate in the UK.
In DCM, the franchise delivered across the full product spectrum: from debut covered bond innovation for Paragon Bank and Saturn’s unrated sub-benchmark sole issuance, to landmark sovereign transactions for the DMO and Bank of England. Three milestone gilt syndications included a £13 billion 10-year that generated a £140 billion orderbook, the largest in the DMO’s history, and two Bank of England US dollar transactions that each broke records at the time of pricing. The volume of repeat mandates – from Lloyds, Nationwide, Standard Chartered and others – speaks to the depth of institutional trust the franchise commands.
In ECM, Barclays executed the largest UK IPO of the year, Shawbrook’s £398 million listing, alongside SSE’s £2 billion primary placing, the first primary accelerated bookbuild (ABB) over £1 billion in Europe to price at a premium, and the £1.14 billion Rosebank raise, the largest M&A-related primary ABB in the UK in a decade and the largest ECM transaction ever on AIM.
The bank participated in four of the six largest UK equity transactions of the year and has led nine of the last twelve £1 billion-plus UK sell-downs since 2020; a secondary market dominance that reflects the quality of its investor relationships as much as its execution capability.
In M&A, the mandate list spans the defining themes of the year: the £38 billion Sizewell C final investment decision, where Barclays advised the UK government on a sole basis in what is the largest privately financed greenfield infrastructure project in UK history; the £2.9 billion Deliveroo acquisition by DoorDash; the £3.8 billion Spectris take-private, steered through a competitive bidding war between Advent and KKR; and Reckitt’s £4.8 billion Essential Home carve-out.
In leveraged finance, Barclays led the largest sterling high-yield bond of the year in David Lloyd, anchored the second-largest EMEA buyout since the global financial crisis in Opella, and has held the number one position in sterling high-yield bonds continuously since 2021.
Across every product and every client type, the integrating force is the same: a globally competitive markets business, a research franchise that clients consistently rate among the world’s best, and a corporate broking platform of 71 FTSE-listed clients that generates the continuity and intelligence no purely transactional bank can offer. In 2025, that integrated model delivered exceptional results – and cemented Barclays’ position as the defining investment banking franchise in its home market.
Best investment bank for ECM: UBS
UBS cemented its position as the standout force in UK equity capital markets in 2025, leading a run of landmark transactions that included the largest UK primary placing in five years, the largest UK equity placement of the year, and the largest US/UK dual-listing IPO in over two decades.
The bank’s deal sheet spanned both scale and breadth. UBS acted as joint global coordinator and corporate broker on SSE’s £2 billion primary placing, the largest UK primary placing in five years and the second largest in 20 years, drawing on a corporate broking relationship with SSE stretching back over 25 years.
It led Shawbrook Group’s £400 million IPO, the largest UK IPO of a UK corporate in over two years, and acted as global coordinator on Fermi Inc’s $785 million dual Nasdaq/LSE listing, the largest US/UK dual-listing IPO in more than 20 years. UBS also served as joint bookrunner on Klarna’s $1.4 billion NYSE IPO, the largest IPO of a UK corporate globally in 2025, alongside Haleon’s £2.5 billion secondary placing for Pfizer and Marex’s $420 million secondary block trade.
This activity was underpinned by a deep UK broking franchise. UBS holds the largest number of FTSE 100, FTSE 250 and non-index corporate broking relationships of any bank in the market, with over 160 UK-based salespeople and corporate broking clients with a combined market capitalisation exceeding £950 billion. Combined with leading high-touch trading market share in the FTSE 100, UBS’s ECM franchise reflects a platform built on both transactional firepower and enduring client relationships across the UK market.
Best investment bank for DCM: Barclays
Debt capital markets activity in the UK remained at elevated levels in 2025 and Barclays once again this year demonstrated its dominance in the market. The bank retained its number one bookrunner position for UK bond issuers, with a 7.5% market share according to Dealogic, delivering across FIG, corporates and SSA with a consistency and breadth that no competitor matched.
In FIG, the franchise delivered across the full product suite and major currency markets, with repeat mandates from Lloyds, Nationwide and Standard Chartered (three, four and three transactions respectively), underscoring the depth of client trust. The team executed strategic restricted tier-1 transactions for Rothesay Life and Aviva, consecutive US dollar AT1s for Standard Chartered, and pushed into genuinely complex territory with a rare 20-year tier 2 for Bupa and Saturn’s debut unrated sub-benchmark issuance on a sole basis. Debut covered bond innovation for Paragon Bank – including the first buy-to-let three-year covered bond of its kind – rounded out a year of technical distinction.
In corporates, Barclays raised £37.9 billion equivalent across 71 transactions, retaining its number one position with a 7.3% market share. Nine transactions were executed on a sole basis across currencies, reflecting the bank’s ability to deliver certainty and speed when it matters most. Highlights included Vodafone’s first ordinary subordinated hybrid, BT’s landmark multi-tranche senior/subordinated cross-currency transaction, and a £450 million print for Osprey – the first subordinated public trade in the UK water sector following an extended period of regulatory disruption.
In SSA, Barclays cemented its status as the UK government’s partner of choice, leading three DMO transactions including a £13 billion 10-year gilt that generated a £140 billion orderbook (the largest in DMO history) and two landmark US dollar transactions for the Bank of England, each surpassing the last.
In 2025, Barclays delivered in the UK not just as a bookrunner of scale but as a genuine strategic partner capable of handling debut issuers, esoteric structures and landmark sovereign transactions with equal authority. The integration of its banking and markets businesses remains a structural advantage that competitors struggle to replicate, and the volume of repeat mandates across the year is clear evidence that clients recognise this strength.
Best investment bank for M&A: Rothschild & Co
Rothschild & Co retains its position as the UK’s most active M&A adviser, topping the league tables for completed and announced deals for another consecutive year. The firm advised on 131 completed transactions worth a publicly disclosed $35 billion, maintaining a definitive lead over both bulge-bracket and independent rivals, with a substantial advantage in disclosed deal value on listed-company M&A.
That scale was matched by complexity. The bank led Spectris’ £4.8 billion recommended cash offer from KKR through a fast-paced competitive UK takeover, and steered John Wood Group’s £2 billion reorganisation and acquisition by Sidara – a landmark restructuring executed amid financial distress, covenant breaches and intricate intercreditor negotiations.
Cross-border highlights spanned Anglo American’s $10.7 billion demerger of Valterra Platinum (UK and South Africa), Abra Group’s $4.2 billion Chapter 11 restructuring of Gol Linhas Aéreas (UK and Brazil), and Kee Safety Group’s £1.3 billion sale to Inflexion and Singapore-based 65 Equity Partners.
Rothschild & Co also demonstrated dual-track expertise on Cinven and Bain Capital’s disposal of STADA to CapVest, the largest European LBO M&A deal of 2025, while its geopolitical advisory practice, chaired by Lord Sedwill, supported clients navigating sovereign wealth and regulatory sensitivities.
With one of the largest advisory banking teams in the country, spread across London, Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham, and longstanding relationships with clients including Anglo American and CapVest spanning decades, Rothschild & Co continues to combine unmatched local depth with global reach.
Best bank for customer experience: Starling Bank
Customer experience is a key differentiator for Starling Bank. Its customer experience strategy is about product simplicity, design consistency and technical reliability, rather than rolling out new features for the sake of it.
This is a digital bank that is also getting back to basics – evident in the relatively strong emphasis placed on being able to speak to UK-based human service agents 24/7.
The results are clear. Starling Bank posts one of the highest net promoter scores in the industry and ranks among the highest UK banks for personal current account customer satisfaction, according to the UK government’s Competition and Markets Authority.
Enhancements to onboarding have increased approval rates by more than 10%. In its call centre, multi-skilled teams supported by improved routing have lifted first-contact resolution rates by more than 10%. This is complemented by improving self-service channels, with 67% of enquiries handled without staff intervention.
The bank has shifted from a transactional app experience to an intent-based approach, using generative AI to help customers actively understand and manage their finances. Tools such as Spending Intelligence allow users to query their financial behaviour in natural language. At the same time, AI is deployed internally to improve service delivery, including automated interaction summaries and document processing.
Security and trust are also central to the proposition. The launch of Scam Intelligence marks a shift from detecting fraud after the event to intervening before a transaction takes place, using AI and image recognition to identify risks at the point of intent. This aligns with broader investments in customer protection and accessibility, including new tools for vulnerability detection, improved bereavement processes and an accessibility hub within the app.
Best for consumer lending: Vanquis
Despite the huge changes Vanquis has been through over the past three years, in key respects it has gone back to its origins in this period: catering to the millions of people in the UK who struggle to access credit from big banks.
This strategy may improve returns, but it can also be more impactful on people’s lives than higher-end credit cards – especially since scandals in the last decade have made other players more hesitant about expanding in this segment.
CEO Ian Mclaughlin takes pride in speaking to customers. Every story is different, and Vanquis serves more than 1.7 million people with credit cards, auto finance, second-charge mortgages, and savings products.
One borrower, for example, recently qualified as an occupational therapist – working in various retail jobs along the way, at same time as bringing up three children – but then struggled to access vehicle finance from other lenders. That almost prevented the customer from taking up the role she had qualified to do, until Vanquis approved a loan.
Vanquis’s wider transformation over the past three years has ensured it can continue to grow this business model, after restructuring its balance sheet and business model and investing in technology.
Alongisde a new app, it has expanded its credit card product range, including credit-builder and promotional variants, and enhanced its credit decisioning speed and consistency. It has leveraged the personal financial management app, Snoop, which it bought in 2023. Alongside a referral programme with Fair Finance, it also launched a benefits checking tool, identifying tens of millions of entitlements.
Best bank for SMEs: HSBC
HSBC sharpened its UK small business proposition in 2025 by addressing three practical barriers to growth: the cost of everyday banking, access to finance and the availability of business support. The strategy formed part of a wider effort to increase HSBC’s share of the SME market while also improving the experience for smaller companies.
The most visible change came in July 2025, when HSBC removed the monthly fee from its Small Business Banking Account. Customers also receive free UK digital banking and access to business specialists, either remotely or through the branch network. The account is available to startups, established small businesses and companies switching from another provider, with borrowing of up to £100,000 available subject to eligibility.
HSBC supplemented the account with its Small Business Growth Programme, launched in June 2025 for customers and non-customers. Developed with Microsoft, UpSkill Universe and Wired, the programme provides free training and guidance on technology, marketing and finance. The open-access model gives HSBC a route to engage entrepreneurs before they require a banking product, while helping existing customers develop capabilities beyond financial management. Its Financing for Growth research, based on more than 1,500 UK business leaders, added information on investment plans, borrowing and the use of technology.
The bank also committed an additional £5 billion of SME lending over five years in November 2025. This sits alongside HSBC UK’s branch promise, under which all 327 branches will remain open until at least 2027. The combination of digital access and physical coverage is important for smaller companies that may complete routine transactions online but still require support for financing decisions.
Best digital bank for SMEs: OakNorth Bank
OakNorth Bank continued to deepen its technology-led approach to SME lending, strengthening its position as one of the most prominent challengers serving the country’s lower mid-market.
The bank notably surpassed £12.5 billion in cumulative lending, with its loans directly contributing to the creation of over 56,000 jobs and 34,000 new homes.
Its proprietary analytics platform remained the engine of its SME proposition, with real-time portfolio surveillance, dynamic covenant tracking and forward-looking stress tests now feeding directly into credit committees staffed by sector specialists, allowing the bank to deliver complex lending decisions in weeks rather than months.
In 2025, the platform’s capabilities were improved further. Automated financial spreading, scenario modelling and integrated market-intelligence overlays cut manual processing and let underwriters focus on structuring bespoke facilities.
Meanwhile, a deepened partnership with OpenAI introduced secure generative-AI tools that draft credit memos and regulatory documentation, accelerating turnaround yet keeping final judgement firmly in human hands. For borrowers, the changes translate into faster indicative terms and clearer explanations of sensitivities; for OakNorth, they unlock underwriting scale without diluting credit discipline.
Client engagement technology advanced in parallel. Newly launched dashboards give founders live visibility into covenant performance and trigger early-warning alerts, turning once-opaque loan covenants into collaborative management tools. Relationship managers reinforce the data with sector research, forward-looking modelling and plain-English guidance, helping leadership teams weigh funding structures against growth ambitions and navigate economic volatility with confidence.
Best bank for large corporates: HSBC
HSBC UK’s large corporates segment delivered a standout year marked by strong financial performance, digital innovation and a deepening commitment to sustainable finance.
The ring-fenced subsidiary of HSBC Holdings brought £10.5 billion in revenue to the group, registering a 5% year-on-year increase, while growing non-SME lending by 17% and expanding its market share by 1.2%. In the £1 billion-plus turnover segment, HSBC achieved market penetration of 77% and held the top position in lead bank citations, at 48%.
Digital product development was a central theme throughout the year. The bank scaled its TradePay solution across more UK businesses, while the client base of Global Wallet, a multi-currency digital wallet for international payments, grew by 53%. HSBC also launched an online fixed deposits proposition on its HSBCnet platform, enabling corporate clients to self-serve GBP term deposits in minutes, and introduced Autohedge, a proprietary FX risk management tool designed to simplify hedging for commercial banking clients.
Sustainable finance remained a strategic priority, with the bank mobilising $54.1 billion globally in the first half of 2025 – a 19% year-on-year increase. A key example of the bank’s deal activity in this space was a £1 billion club green loan facility for SSEN Transmission, the North of Scotland electricity transmission operator, to finance critical grid upgrade projects. HSBC also acted as sole lender on a £125 million financing for 10 King William Street, a landmark office development above Bank station in the City of London, targeting top-tier sustainability certifications including BREEAM Outstanding and WELL Platinum.
Best digital bank for large corporates: Bank of America
Bank of America has deepened its digital capabilities for large UK corporate clients through sustained technology investment and a disciplined approach to artificial intelligence.
The bank invests $13 billion annually in technology and has committed $1.5 billion over the past five years to building the data infrastructure that underpins its responsible AI strategy. This investment is translating into tangible results: more than 20 AI use cases are now delivering measurable impact across the enterprise, with over 50 more in development.
At the centre of the bank’s digital offering for corporates is CashPro, its flagship digital banking platform used by more than 35,000 corporate and commercial clients worldwide to manage treasury, trade and credit operations. In 2025, CashPro recorded a record number of mobile sign-ins, up 20% year-over-year. Chat usage on the platform rose 21%, with nearly 70% of corporate clients now using the AI-powered CashPro Chat tool for account information, transaction tracking and service resolution.
The bank also launched Capital Markets Insights on the CashPro app, a new feature that gives clients a centralised view of investment-grade market and issuance data, replacing what had previously been a fragmented process of emails, phone calls and third-party channels.
Generative AI is also reshaping internal workflows, directly benefiting UK-based clients. In 2025, the bank launched AskGPS, an in-house generative AI assistant for its global payments solutions division, trained on more than 3,200 internal documents. Inquiries which previously took staff up to an hour can now be answered in seconds, significantly accelerating response times for corporate clients.
