Banks enjoy four structural advantages that contribute to their dominance in borrowing cost and fee negotiations:

1. Banks are insulated from pricing pressures that are commonplace in conventional supplier relationships.
2. When banks negotiate they use bundling strategies to great advantage.
3. Banking is an industry where switching costs favour the status quo.
4. Bankers take fee negotiations more seriously than their corporate counterparts. Banks are almost always better prepared than their customers.

These advantages are magnified by corporate indifference. In banking negotiations, credit availability is often the only real issue for businesses. On matters of price, the banks prevail by default.