Time to put our own house in order

Banking leaders join an “exciting quest to establish agreed standards of professionalism for the industry”. SIMON THOMPSON explains its historic significance.

There’s an inevitable temptation to celebrate this month’s launch of the Chartered Banker Professional Standards Board as a kind of culmination – an historic destination reached after years of idealistic (and often, sadly, unproductive) campaigning to define an agreed code of ethical behaviour and professional conduct for our industry, and the ethical, professional and technical standards for our industry that form the foundation of a successful, sustainable, socially responsible banking profession.

That’s been our business from the very inception of this Institute in 1875. And it’s a goal more necessary now than ever as we seek to win back customer trust and respect in the destructive wake of the financial crisis.

So we’d scarcely be human if we weren’t both proud and delighted that industry leaders of such calibre, and drawn from so wide an institutional spectrum (see Leaders rise to the challenge p12), should have put their weight behind such an important initiative.

But this is no end-point. Quite the reverse. We are now at the very start of what will be a long, complex and exciting quest to codify best practice and establish standards of professionalism on which we can all agree. This is the first time that banking leaders have attempted such a thing – amazing, when you really think of it, for an ancient activity which has so often (and so lightly) enjoyed calling itself a “profession”.

That’s exactly what makes this momentous. We may think of ourselves as professionals, but, as Susan Rice, who has so ably led this initiative, points out, “there are no clear benchmarks against which colleagues and customers can measure our professional capabilities. If anyone asks: ‘What do you need to know to be a banker?’, right now, there’s simply no definitive answer.”

Some might argue that the industry’s reputation has been so damaged, its professional standing can be regained only by external dictat. I disagree. The Government and the regulators can and do establish minimum thresholds. But the lowest is rarely the best. It’s for the Institute, working with our industry, to set out the best practice to which we all want to aspire.

Moreover, the credibility of any set of standards is bound to gain strength not by being externally imposed, but precisely because it’s voluntarily agreed, policed and enforced by the practitioners themselves. That’s professionalism.

Return to Regulars contents
Return to Magazine contents