The superior performance of the financial services sector in the years leading up to the credit crisis was almost entirely due to luck rather than skill – and banks increasingly gambled on luck in an effort to keep up with their peers, a senior Bank of England official said.

Andrew Haldane, executive director for financial stability, said in remarks prepared for a banking conference in Chicago that the money-making machine that banking appeared to be had “seduced” practitioners and policymakers into overlooking the risks built into most of the industry’s business models.