The British Banking Association (BBA)

The British Banking Association (BBA) have warned that large banks are preparing to relocate and leave the UK in early next year over fears around Brexit. Most banks had backed the UK remaining in the EU.

Writing in The Observer, BBA boss Anthony Browne also says smaller banks could move operations overseas by 2017.

“Their hands are quivering over the relocate button,” he wrote.

Mr Browne has also said the current “public and political debate at the moment is taking us in the wrong direction.”

His comments follow those at the BBA annual conference last week, when he stated that banks had already “set up project teams to work out what operations they need to move by when, and how best to do it”.