Others see a more promising future in shedding retail activities and focussing more heavily on corporate finance. BIS Review 33/2001  1  Some banks believe that the integration of banking and insurance activities offers important opportunities to exploit synergies and diversify risks.
At the retail level, the rationale is that delivery channels developed for banking services can be cheaply exploited to deliver other financial products. At the wholesale level, banks following the integrated strategy believe that the provision of an assured credit source will help them with mandates for other forms of corporate finance, possibly with fatter profit margins.