Barclays

Barclays is one of the classic British universal banks, aimed at consumers, businesses, cards, lending, and investment banking rather than one narrow niche. By our assessment, its best-known strength is that breadth: a current-account bank, a major credit-card player, and a serious wholesale and investment business all sit under the same name. The downside is familiar for a bank this size, because the experience can feel split between everyday retail banking and a far more complex corporate side. In practice that means online banking, branches, cards, and loans on one side, while markets and institutional finance sit on the other. Against smaller banks it has more scale and more product depth; against more focused lenders it can seem a little sprawling. Barclays is in the United Kingdom.