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If there is one consequence of the last few weeks of upheaval we are all going to regret it is the formation of the new superbanks. Halifax and Lloyds TSB will between them have an overpowering presence in the mortgages, savings and current accounts markets, controlling about a third of each. Santander is also increasing its foothold with control of Abbey, Alliance & Leicester and now the Bradford & Bingley savings book.

Add these to the Barclays, RBS NatWest and HSBC and the banks’ dominance of high street personal finance is awesome.

Such will be Lloyds TSB’s position that, once the credit crisis is over, it would not be beyond the realms of possibility for it to seek to squeeze out unwelcome rivals.

It will have the power to offer high savings or low mortgage rates to make life very difficult for building societies that seek to compete.

While this may benefit consumers in the short run, in the longer term as competition is forced out of the market then we can expect mortgage rates to rise and savings rates to fall. They will have a crushing hold on financial advice. Halifax and Lloyds TSB were by some way the biggest sellers of corporate bonds in the early part of the decade.

With less competition on the high street it will be far easier for them to flog the flavour of the month product to their unsuspecting customers. The possibilities for cross-selling are enormous. Once Lloyds TSB has its hands on all that money from Halifax savers you can bet your bottom dollar that a goodly portion will end up in some of Scottish Widows’s moribund funds.

Santander too can be expected to make the most of the extra customers it will be picking up. The possibilities for aggressive cross-selling will not be passed up by any bank.

So where does this leave the IFA? The tighter the stranglehold that the high street banks have on our money the harder it will become for smaller independents, in particular, to compete.

This makes it imperative that the FSA plays hard on the retail distribution review and insists that the IFA brand really stands out from the rest.

It is by being clearly different and offering choice and service that IFAs have the best prospects in what will be an increasingly tough business climate.

Stay positive

I am sick to the back teeth of the credit crunch. I know the journalist in me should be leaping around at the thought of all those great stories.

As one colleague said in our news conference, this will probably be the biggest personal finance story of our lives.

But as successive banks throw in the towel and savers wonder which way to turn, I become more despondent by the day.

I long to find some positive uplifting news. I want to write about soaring stock markets, investment funds doubling your money in a couple of years and pensioners retiring with record incomes.

I have tried. We even managed to come up with some financial reasons to be cheerful. But any cheer seems to be short-lived as we are buried in yet more gloomy news. It surely does not help that we have, possibly, the dourest prime minister in history.

Can you imagine if Gordon Brown had been in power during the Second World War? Instead of being inspired to “fight them on the beaches”, we would have sent our savings to Ireland and curled up in our Nissan huts to await the inevitable.

I fear it will be some time yet before I can dredge up some more positive stories.

Perhaps the bankers will learn from their mistakes. But, somehow, I doubt it.

Lose the fear

I have never known such fear among savers and investors. My mailbag has doubled in the last few weeks and we receive many calls each day from savers who fear for their money.

I cannot say I blame them. From their point of view, they have worked hard to build up their savings and then a bunch of overpaid fools has put it all in jeopardy.

Besides the fear, one other thing has come across and that is the substantial sums people choose to keep in cash. Plenty of those calling in count their cash savings in the hundreds of thousands – and they want to spread it around.

This is something made increasingly difficult by the rise of the superbanks operating under several brands.

Of course, the fear is not just for their savings. Many are calling who fear for their jobs or their homes.

They can see their whole livelihood under threat – and, if they suspect their job could go it is already too late to think about insurance.

Wealth preservation is indeed the order of the day. But for some this is beginning to look increasingly difficult.