A think-tank’s call for UK bankers to take a Hippocratic-style oath to encourage honourable behaviour in the sector has been met with widespread scepticism
A first stepThe call by ResPublica for bankers to adopt a moral oath as a means of putting the industry “on the road to absolution” is seen, at best, as no more than a step in the right direction; at worst, it has been dismissed as naïve.
Were the UK to get its bankers to pledge to follow an ethical and moral code, it would not be the first country to do so. Bankers in the Netherlands have, since the start of this year, run the risk of fines, blacklisting or suspension if they fail to honour the oath they are now obliged to take.
In what could probably be described as lukewarm support, Paul Chisnall, Executive Director of the British Bankers’ Association (BBA), noted that the concept proposed by ResPublica is not new, having been considered as part of the BBA’s input into the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards.
In a blog, Chisnall stressed that a bankers’ oath “can’t be the only step and it shouldn’t be the first".
BBA blog
Flawed notionSir Richard Lambert FCSI(Hon), the former Director-General of the CBI who is heading up a review into standards in the British banking industry, dismissed a bankers’ pledge as “just hot air”, reported City AM.
Lambert, who was profiled in the June 2014 print edition of the Review, said: “Several hundred thousand people call themselves bankers in the UK, and they have no common qualification; many of them have no qualifications at all. Most of them have little or no processes for self-discipline in the way that, say, the General Medical Council has.”
He added: “If you have all bankers taking an oath and it is just words, and it is seen within six months to be flawed, I think you’re in a worse place than you were before.”
Lambert maintained that for there to be any meaningful change in culture, the banking sector needs to first build a more cohesive professional body and ethos – a process which he believed could take many years to achieve.
City AM story
Trivial pursuit
Mikko Arevuo, Senior Lecturer in Strategic Management and Fellow of the Adam Smith Institute, did not mince his words either, dismissing the suggestion as “excessively naïve”.
Instead of restoring consumer trust and confidence in the financial system, Arevuo contended that such a pledge would merely trivialise the ethical issues at the heart of criticism of the banking sector.
He said: “It gives a false sense of confidence that implies that an expression of a few lines of moral platitudes will equip bankers to resist the temptations of short-term gain and rent-seeking behaviour that are present in the financial services industry.”
Arevuo argued that the bankers’ oath was just one of “many otherwise quite reasonable proposals” contained in ResPublica's Virtuous Banking report.
Adam Smith Institute blog
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