Price discrimination and cross-subsidy

Cross-subsidy broadly describes a situation where some prices are set below a certain cost benchmark and prices for other products or customer groups are above it. Questions about cross-subsidy, and broader questions about pricing practices, are frequently levelled at financial services products. These questions have been looked at many times by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and its predecessors, and are due to be raised again by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in its forthcoming strategic review of retail banking business models.