The chart that shows how savers and borrowers are clobbered by banks

The margin began to return to the 2007 level as the intensity of the crisis eased – until the Government’s Funding for Lending Scheme interfered with the market in 2012, and aided the pickpocketing of savers. The Bank of England handed money to lenders at rates as low as 0.25pc on the condition that they lend it out to mortgage borrowers or small firms.

With this cheap money available, banks had far less need of savers’ cash and cut savings rates far faster, the data suggests, than they cut mortgage rates.

The data, based on European Central Bank figures and compiled by SNL, an information firm, also shows the savings-mortgage gap for other major European countries. Germany, which avoided property boom and bust, has shown predictable stability, albeit with its banks squeezing more out of Germans than other European banks can manage.

Spanish banks, in contrast, have been extremely volatile with their pricing and, even though they have ramped up the amount they make from saving and lending, analysts at SNL say that, because of the glut of property in Spain, they will agree loans only for the most creditworthy borrowers.

Expats should take note.

• andrew.oxlade@telegraph.co.uk

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