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Bank shares have been under pressure again today - as recorded in an earlier post - and a couple of analysts have looked at the exposure of the major lenders to the property sector, which was a headache for many of them in 2008 crisis.

At Bernstein, analysts have calculated the bailed out banks Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group are the most exposed - with aroudn £19bn and £13bn of loans respectively.

The banking sector’s exposure is already down from £150bn to £86bn according to Bank of England data. “Banks haven’t really played the asset class in the last five years - it’s mostly been the shadow banking sector,” said the Bernstein analysts.

Photograph: Bernstein

Raul Sinha, analyst at JP Morgan, says the major UK lenders have £69bn of the loans and the smaller banks and building societies some £17bn (which is also at the riskier end).

Sinha’s view is that:

“Risks for the major UK banks are manageable, small lenders in focus”.

RBS’ exposure is 66% of its tangible net asset value, according to Sinha.

The annual report of RBS shows that the proportion of the loan book with loan to values of more than 75% has fallen and the deals where the value of the property is less than the loan are largely loans from the past.