In this, the fourth in our series of annual reports, we have again sought to remain neutral chroniclers of events that have transpired over the last year, curating information from around the world regarding an increasingly coherent and robust regulatory and supervisory reform agenda aimed at persistent culture and conduct related risks in the financial sector. Once again, we have endeavored to identify emerging consensus views, key points of departure, and to speculate about what we might expect to see in the year ahead. Above all else, it has been our hope that this series of reports might serve as a platform across which leading industry participants may address one another usefully. With nearly three dozen contributed items from leading global figures featured in this year’s report, we hope that readers will find it to be our most valuable to date.
What a year it’s been …
In the introduction to last year’s report, I spent some time discussing how and why misconduct in the banking sector was relevant in a much broader social context. I argued that these misconduct scandals had worked to erode our already perilously depleted stocks of ‘social capital’ and to further extend a marked decline in the public’s trust in our core institutions. This, I continued, might in turn foment social unrest and a severing of the essential ties that bind successful societies and market-economies. I wondered, hopefully, whether the shared peril of COVID-19 might help to usher in an era of greater social solidarity. And I suggested that the banking sector might be presented with a redemptive opportunity, as governments directed financial succor to pandemic-ravaged businesses and households through the banking system.
These views reflected deeply held personal convictions that lie at the very heart of our founding story at Starling, and I confess that, as I wrote, I worried that I might be accused of having strayed too far from our adopted posture of ‘neutral chronicler of events.’ But, at the time, I felt that we had reached a tipping point with regard to concerns for social capital, civic discourse, ‘corporate purpose’, and deteriorating trust in core institutions. I thus concluded that it would be insufficient to remark on the topics at the center of this series of reports without setting them snugly into the context of broader social issues at play. Given how events were subsequently borne out, I hope readers will agree with that editorial decision.
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