Member Article

How would you change your business bank?

Banks have hit the headlines again this week. Lloyds have announced redundancies of up to 9000 staff and National Australia Bank look like accelerating their exit from the UK market with rumours of an IPO for the Yorkshire and Clydesdale Banks. It was Yorkshire Bank where my career in Banking started (and finished), when I learnt it wasn’t the industry for me.

As I look back though now I remember some truly excellent people. Bankers have had a tough ride for the last few years. However my memories of bankers are actually some of the most morally and ethically sound people that I’ve ever worked with, in particular those on the frontline. I can’t ever remember seeing anyone happy about an SME not doing well. I don’t recall anyone taking pleasure from a complaint. I do remember bankers stressing about the issues of their customers and knowing they had to deliver another difficult policy introduced from ‘Head Office’. These same bankers had played an important part in the previous successes of their local communities and were quite often people who’d given significant amounts of time and money to charitable causes.

This isn’t to say the industry didn’t need shaking up. In every bank some of the lending errors were irresponsible. Perhaps there should be a more stringent approach to qualification as a professional lending banker, starting with Chartered Institute of Bankers Exams which should be mandatory. The role of the banker in the performance of a business can be just as important as an accountant.

Furthermore, as we move forward should we see Banks provide a measure of social impact in business lending decisions? How much lending over the last 15 years had the purposes of making income for a bank and supplementing a landlords pension? As we claw out of recession perhaps when a bank makes a decision to lend some of the measurables should take into account things like job creation or local economic benefit.

There’s a bedrock of good people in the UK’s banks, and those that have survived deserve a pat on the back. As we move forward I hope the government can stop the bashing and look at facilitating a better environment to make life sustainably better for our local, SME and banking communities.

What are your thoughts on the future of banking? How would you like to see banks change to support the community?

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Lancaster ICV .