The UK banking industry won’t change significantly as a result of the new industry rules to be proposed next Monday by the Independent Commission on Banking, bankers and lawyers said today.

The ICB, the body mandated by the UK government to make the financial services sector safer, is likely to propose that banks break up their retail and investment banking divisions -ringfencing deposits to guarantee savings in case that another part of the bank collapses. This does not imply separating the bank into two different entities, at group level, but it would mean that the two units have different balance sheets -or ways of funding themselves.