Nothing new here.

Honesty is a quality we expect from a financial institution just the same as from a significant other.

The same goes for trustworthiness.

But what about loyalty?

According to New Ireland, 86% of us expect it from a partner. The surprise is that 70% also demand the same quality from a bank.

Makes you wonder how deeply the people questioned for the survey thought about the question.

Despite some glaring examples to the contrary . . . stand up AIB and take a bow . . . banks still insist that they go to great lengths to promote a culture of honesty and trust within their organisations.

But loyalty, like love, is a quality that inanimate corporate entities such as banks are incapable of feeling, let alone expressing. Indeed, a sound if cynical basis for most employee relationships is the belief that it is a bad idea to love your place of work because it cannot love you back. The same goes for loyalty.

But just because companies are incapable of loyalty, this does not mean that they spurn it when it comes their way.

Far from it. The banks thrive on our unrequited loyalty, raking in massive profits that are the envy of Europe because of our reluctance to be more free with our favours.

Part of the reason was that, in the Tweedle-Dum, Tweedle-Dee world of Irish banking, there was nowhere else to go. The only time the banks rolled out the red carpet was when they rushed to sign up new students as customers in the knowledge that, if they got them young, they had them for life.

But the old certainties are breaking down and, as more players enter the financial services market, the pace of change has caught some banks on the hop.

One of the biggest shifts is taking place in mortgages, where new figures from the Irish Bankers' Federation show that 13% of all new loans are taken out by people who aren't moving house: they're simply switching lenders in search of something better.

This is a seismic shift for an industry used to hiding behind an arcane legal system to keep customers locked into their existing mortgages.

Of course it has always been possible in theory to switch lenders. But up to now it wasn't worth the hassle or expense of having solicitors crawl all over the title deeds just to double-check that you are in fact the owner of the home where you live.

But as the stakes increase in the mortgage game, the banks have had to change their tune.

Hungry newcomers are prepared to accept title insurance to speed up the paperwork involved in moving mortgages. Some will even foot the solicitors' bills so that the move costs you nothing.

As switching becomes commonplace, incumbent lenders have had to resort to drastic steps to protect their patch. Two of the biggest, Bank of Ireland and Permanent TSB, have done the unthinkable by holding back some of the recent rate increases from the thousands of homeowners still paying standard variable mortgage rates. The move reduces, but does not eliminate, the big incentive for these people to take their business elsewhere.

Switching has had an even bigger impact in the current account market, where new banking regulations have taken most of the headaches out of moving from bank to another. While the numbers switching have been fairly modest, the threat of losing business has forced all players to introduce some form of free banking, an unimaginable perk even a few short years ago.

Of course progress has been slow in many areas and, the more complicated the product, the less inclined we are to move. Health insurance is a good example and, even though the law ensures we can switch without losing benefits, VHI still manages to cling on to its stranglehold on the market.

But once the bonds of loyalty have begun to unravel, there's no telling where we'll end up.

nbrady@tribune. ie