Pricing levers at the disposal of Westpac's management, combined with improvements in market share, have led Morgan Stanley's bank equity research team to refresh its "overweight" rating on Westpac.In a report released on Friday, the Morgan Stanley analysts wrote that Westpac was their preferred major bank. They cited "better franchise momentum, below-average credit risk and relatively strong capital and provisioning." They also argued that the bank's retail banking arm would outperform business banking, "giving us more confidence in the outlook for margins, loan-losses, ROE and dividend growth at WBC than at ANZ or NAB."They pointed to Westpac's "shift in strategic focus from growth to returns" and a "relatively low credit risk profile and strong provisioning levels", and said Westpac's business mix and home loan re-pricing would help the 2013 financial year margin outlook.Morgan Stanley projects average growth in pre-provision profit for Westpac of 4.9 per cent a year over the next three years, and growth in cash profit of 1.7 per cent.The analysts anticipate Westpac may buy back some capital in 2013 to offset new shares issued under its dividend reinvestment program.National Australia Bank was another bank drawing favourable commentary from sell-side researchers last week.Analysts at Deutsche Bank concluded that NAB could expect an improvement of between 20 and 30 basis points in its UK subsidiary, Clydesdale Bank, through the operation of the UK government's "funding for lending" scheme.Under the scheme, UK banks may borrow UK Treasury bills from the Bank of England equal to five per cent of their stock of home loans and business loans.While the most recent BoE data shows that NAB and Clydesdale have yet to make use of the scheme, the Deutsche analysts believe the scheme is already helping to temper pricing in the retail deposit market in the UK, to the benefit of all banks.Deutsche projects Clydesdale could derive a revenue benefit of £80 million to £130 million a year (A$123 million to A$173 million) after tax from the operation of the scheme. This is equal to about a third of the underlying cash profit of NAB's UK arm in the year to September 2012.The Deutsche analysts argue that "with the stock trading at a 17 per cent discount to peers this improving UK outcome does not seem factored into the current share price". They rate NAB a buy.