Britain's bank executives face tough questioning in the next two weeks from a powerful parliamentary committee seeking an explanation for delays in giving credit card customers a better deal.
The chief executives of Lloyds TSB and HBOS appear on Tuesday, and the heads of Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays and HSBC's UK business are up a week later.
The committee roughed up the bank bosses a year ago for overcharging, reckless lending and not being clear on rates for credit cards.
The lawmakers want to know why the banks have been slow to make requested changes, a committee member told Reuters.
"I should think it (the committee) will be suspicious," said Nigel Beard, a member of parliament for the ruling Labour Party. The banks' inaction "is symptomatic of an industry not attuned to thinking about things from the customer's point of view".
British credit card spending rose to £120 billion last year from £30 billion in 1993, according to the Bank of England. The amount owed on cards rose to £52 billion from 10 billion in that time.
At the committee's request, lenders have agreed to have a "summary box" in promotions that lists charges and key conditions, but the boxes are not clear enough, and the banks "have each been producing what they think is the right answer", Mr Beard said.
The lawmakers also want banks to use a single method to calculate the annual percentage rate and to adjust penalty charges to levels that reflect the cost to the lender.
At last year's session, Matt Barrett, then CEO of Britain's biggest credit card lender Barclays, was accused by a committee member of "barefaced cynicism" when he said he did not borrow on credit cards because they were too expensive. Mr Barrett is now chairman of Barclays, and the MPs will face his replacement, John Varley, who peppers his language with words such as "rebarbative", "nemesis" and "supine". The committee will also get its first taste of Michael Geoghegan, the recently installed head of HSBC UK.
HSBC, the world's third-biggest bank by market value, is expanding in UK credit cards, a market in which it has been relatively weak, after buying US consumer finance company Household International last year. Lloyds TSB's Eric Daniels and HBOS's James Crosby will be joined by Fergus Brownlee, executive vice-president for Europe of US lender Capital One, on Tuesday. Varley and Geoghegan line up with Royal Bank of Scotland's Sir Fred Goodwin and Shane Flynn, chairman of MBNA Europe, at the second session.