Britain's biggest banks are preparing to unleash an advertising blitz costing tens of millions of pounds in an attempt to protect their market share as new rules are introduced to encourage speedier account transfers between rivals.
Sky News has learnt that the big five high street banks - Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, Royal Bank of Scotland and Santander UK - have booked huge volumes of media space during the late summer as they brace for a new seven-day current account-switching system.
The Government and the industry have agreed a mid-September launch for the initiative, which ministers hope will accelerate switching levels to the benefit of new entrants such as Metro Bank.
All of the big five are preparing to spend significant sums on marketing in September, with one advertising executive estimating that they could fork out as much as £20m in that month alone.
Lloyds is understood to be planning a major outlay on continuing to position its Halifax subsidiary as a "challenger" bank, while Santander UK is expected to spend a large sum on its 1-2-3 current account offer.
RBS, which is 81% owned by British taxpayers, is thought to be preparing a major campaign focused on customer service improvements.
"You can't book advertising space anywhere," the head of one major UK retail bank said.
"It's all gone already."
The disclosure that the major banks are preparing mass advertising campaigns in the run-up to the deadline will stoke fears that the dominant players will simply use their greater financial firepower to continue to shut out smaller banks.
Between them, the five largest lenders account for an overwhelming share of the current account market, with last month's report by the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards criticising the industry's treatment of customers and the speed with which the Government has imposed change upon it.
The technology required to support the new switching system has cost approximately £750m.
If it is not judged to be successful, the commission recommended that a full account portability model be considered, which banks have warned privately would cost many billions of pounds.
New entrants to the retail banking market have been buoyed by moves to ease onerous capital and liquidity requirements set by the industry regulator, but they have warned that these will be insufficient to trigger a genuine shift in the competitive landscape.
Sky News understands that the big banks have been operating a "buddy system", which pairs rival banks to help test systems' readiness ahead of the September deadline.
A working group overseen by the Payments Council, the body which oversees payment systems, has been supervising the changes for months.
Insiders at some of the big banks have, though, privately expressed concerns about the readiness of their competitors to meet the deadline.
RBS alone has around 500 staff working on the project, many of whom are contract employees.
"The industry is only going to be as strong as the weakest link on this," said one banker last month.
Concerns about the banks' readiness has been exacerbated by their poor track record at implementing and maintaining sophisticated IT systems in recent years.
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