south of England for a short time, and it had been proven successful in helping to settle transactions between different savings banks and in improving the service to clients (particularly when on holiday within the UK). Also in 1955, increased competition for deposits (and most notably the growing popularity of hire purchase) led to calls for the Trustee Savings Banks Association to ask the Exchequer and the National Debt Commissioners to allow withdrawals by cheque (as originally proposed in 1926 by W.A. Barclay of the Perth Savings Bank). In 1965 a review of retail credit markets led to the trustee savings banks being allowed to issue current accounts (with cheque withdrawals but no overdraft facilities), undertake the payment of utility bills, and safeguard securities and valuables. Accordingly, the TSB Trust Company was established in 1967 and a year later the first unit trust issue was offered. Regulatory innovations which allowed the TSBs to diversify their business threatened to erode the deposit base of the clearing banks. But this potential diversification was limited by the restrictive central control of the Exchequer, the National Debt Commissioners and the Trustee Savings Bank Inspection Committee. This type of central control had been designed both to guarantee depositors that the savings banks would remain a secure alternative for their deposits and, by standardising general interest rates and regulations, to make it possible for local trustees to work autonomously. By the early 1960s transactions at retail counters were increasing at around 5% per annum. In 1964 the London Trustee Savings Bank was the first to computerise standing orders, and all account records were put on computer by 1967 – this being the first UK bank to do so. Some other savings banks still worked with leather-bound ledgers, and others used passbooks; either way handwritten record cards piled up in thousands and even the most basic management information and accounting (such as the annual balance sheet) was a huge task to compile, requiring a lot of overtime. The savings banks' administration was thus antiquated and time-consuming. They needed modernization and streamlining. Amalgamation into a single entity In 1970 there were 75 savings banks in a loose association, with £2,806 million in total assets. There was a wide variation in size: five of the banks each had over £100m in assets (together accounting for 25% of the total), 14 had between £50m and £100m (35%), 39 between £10m