Corporate treasurers, pension funds and charities are seeking advice on whether to quit banks engulfed by the recent welter of financial scandals.
Institutional savers are nervous that banks may struggle to afford punishments doled out to those guilty of rigging interest rates, mis-selling products and performing inadequate checks against money laundering.
Cost estimates on rate-rigging alone top $20 billion.
Many of the world's biggest lenders are fighting to maintain the confidence of regulators and customers as ratings agencies cast doubts on their creditworthiness.
However, these efforts have been undermined by revelations that bank staff conspired to rig the Libor interbank lending rate, which underpins transactions worth trillions of dollars.
Furthermore, several banks suspected of a role in fixing the euro interest rate known as Euribor are supplying regulators with information in hopes of receiving lower fines, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters today.
This nervousness is already having an impact. Data shows that increasing amounts of wealth are starting to flow into alternative investments such as money market funds.
These highly liquid products invest clients' cash in US Treasury Bills, UK gilts and across a range of short-dated paper issued by top-rated banks. They are commonly used as alternatives to bank deposits because their net asset value rarely dips below the sum of cash invested.
Global research house EPFR said that money market funds enjoyed their best week for inflows this year in the week to July 11, attracting nearly $18 billion - the week that Barclays' chief executive resigned after admitting the bank's role in Libor manipulation.
Many institutional savers are rediscovering the advantages of parking money in funds rather than traditional deposits.
Investment into UK fixed-interest funds via the Skandia Investment Solutions platform rose by 7% in the second quarter of 2012. The popularity of cash funds is also soaring, with first-quarter sales up 28%.
"Funds offer capital preservation in a liquid, transparent product that provides professionally managed credit risk ... You have to choose who you think does it best," said one senior cash manager in the asset management arm of a large bank, who declined to be named because of the sensitivities of his role.
With many staple AAA investments, such as Bunds or Swiss francs, showing zero or even negative yields, Fitch Ratings Director Charlotte Quiniou said that investors pushing more wealth into cash funds were willing to sacrifice returns for perceived safety.
The funds themselves are providing additional comfort to investors by paring down their own exposure to banks.
"The flows in and out of money market funds are very much driven by the perception of market risk ... when investors fear that the market risk is increasing, these funds are used as safe havens," Ms Quiniou said.
Libor is expected to hit banks harder than any other regulatory rap, including the payment protection insurance mis-selling scandal.
UK and US authorities handed Barclays a $450m fine last month, on top of the £100m the lender had spent on in-house investigations.
The ultimate cost of Libor is not the only worry for depositors. HSBC said today that it was setting aside $2 billion to cover penalties arising from US investigations into its anti-money laundering failures in Mexico and mis-selling compensation.
Barclays, meanwhile, could face fresh penalties over fees it paid during its 2008 capital raisings.
Together with RBS and Lloyds, these two banks also have to shell out a share of up to £6 billion of compensation to customers they misled about interest rate hedging products.
