LONDON, July 12 Reuters Britain39;s eight largest lenders have enough capital to ride out economic stress deeper than the 2008 financial crisis, the Bank of England BoE said on Wednesday, as the sector faces sharply rising interest rates pummelling consumers and businesses.

The test checked if banks were holding enough capital to cope with theoretical shocks under a scenario which the BoE said was more severe than the global financial turmoil of 2008 when British taxpayers had to bail out several lenders.

The test also measured how well the lenders would cope with a global rise in interest rates.

The eight banks account for 75 of lending in Britain.

The results of the 202223 annual cyclical scenario ACS stress test show that the major UK banks are resilient to a severe stress scenario that incorporates persistently higher advanced economy inflation, increasing global interest rates, deep simultaneous recessions with materially higher unemployment in the UK and global economies, and sharp falls in asset prices, the BoE said in a statement.

Major UK banks capital and liquidity positions remain robust and profitability has increased, which enables them both to improve their capital positions and to support their customers.

There was no common pass mark but each bank had to scale a bespoke hurdle, with Barclays, Lloyds, HSBC, NatWest, Santander UK, Standard Chartered, Nationwide Building Society and Virgin Money all showing no capital inadequacies, the BoE said.

The…