The Bank of England is closing the personal banking service it runs for employees, The Guardian reports. The staff bank, which has operated for 300 years, has fallen victim to a cost-cutting review. The closure is also seen as an acknowledgement by the bank that it lacks some modern services, such as online accounts, that most consumers take for granted. The bank previously withdrew from providing retail banking services to government employees. Online lenders more than doubled the average size of their loan books in 2015, when many were still valued on three-digit earnings multiples. But much has changed in the sector this year, according to the Financial Times. Because pure marketplace lenders mainly originate and do not hold the loans that they make, this fall-off has led to an immediate and sharp drop in income. Lending Club, for instance, gets some 90 per cent of its income in the form of origination fees, so writing fewer new loans has led to abrupt and painful shrinkage. We have already seen one lender shut down and some of the largest players - such as Prosper Marketplace and Lending Club - cutting jobs heavily in order to reduce costs. Bank of America profit for 2Q16 was down 0.2 per cent on the previous quarter. The bank was hurt by the continued drag of low interest rates, though the bank's results beat analysts' expectations, with second-quarter earnings per share of 36 cents, compared to 45 cents a share in the same period a year ago. Analysts had expected the company to report earnings of about 33 cents a share on US$20.4 billion in revenue, according to a consensus estimate from Thomson Reuters. There were other bright spots for BoA: delinquencies and charge-offs for its US credit card business fell compared to the first quarter, according to CNBC.