The body responsible for overseeing risks to the UK financial system has carried out stress tests on seven UK banks that are assessed for their potential systemic risks. All banks passed the tests.

Two of the UK's main banking groups - Standard Chartered and Royal Bank of Scotland - will not have to provide a revised capital plan, the Bank of England said, as it carried out stress tests on seven groups - RBS and Standard Chartered were deemed the weakest.

The BoE's Prudential Regulation Authority, responsible for supervising the resilience of the financial system, said its test of how banks will cope with a severe market event or other shock "did not reveal capital inadequacies for five of the seven banks, given their balance sheets at end-2014 (Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, Nationwide, and Santander UK)".

Since the 2008 financial crisis, regulators have stepped up their scrutiny of how resilient banks and other financial bodies are against potential market shocks. In wealth management, the robustness of a bank's balance sheet has become an actual selling point for clients mindful of financial risks.

"For the other two banks (Royal Bank of Scotland Group and Standard Chartered) the PRA board decided that, given continuing improvements to their resilience over the course of 2015 and plans to increase capital, these banks were not required to submit a revised capital plan," it said in a statement today.

The BoE warned, however, that a concern is the persistent weakness of bank profitability.

"UK banks’ profitability improved very marginally between 2014 H1 and 2015 H1, but remains low relative to historic levels. Consistent with that, major UK banks’ shares continue to trade around or below their book value, falling further since the July 2015 report. UK banks’ aggregate return on assets in 2015 H1 was less than half of its value in 2006 H1, at 30 basis points," the BoE said.

"Following the global financial crisis, there was a period of heightened risk aversion and retrenchment from risk-taking as financial institutions, businesses and households sought to repair their balance sheets. The FPC [Financial Policy Committee] judges that the system has now moved out of that period. Household debt has fallen relative to income, but is still elevated, banks are more resilient and credit is generally more available," the report said.