Raise your Brand Profile Amongst the Next Generation of Finance Leaders

If you live in the UK, you may have seen the Channel 4 television programme on 28th February this year (2013) entitled ‘Bank on Dave’. Burnley Savings and Loans to give it its other name, is a company (not a bank) which offers 5% ‘deposit’ rates to lenders and offers loans to those who cannot obtain funding from the high street banks. So how does Dave do this when the high street banks offer no interest at all or perhaps only ½ or 1%? In fact ‘Dave’ is one of a new breed of ‘brokers’ who simply introduce lenders and borrowers to each other. The key difference from banks is that banks have a balance sheet with a depositor contract on one side and a separate contract with its borrowers on the other whereas a peer to peer company has no such contracts and indeed is not even involved at all in borrowing or lending! This is because in P2P, lending contracts are directly between borrower and lenders and the P2P company does not take ‘deposits’ on to its own balance sheet or keep the loans its customers make on its balance sheet.

A paper by Dr Linda Arch, Lecturer in Finance at the ICMA Centre has been published by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR). The Spring 2019 issue of the IPPR Progressive Review is based on the theme of democracy, post-Brexit. In the paper titled “'Our distrust is very expensive’: How do we restore trust in banks?”, Linda explores the idea that effective bank regulation depends upon trust, which requires trustworthy banks and regulators.

ICMA Centre MSc student Richard Hamilton, from Belfast has been awarded a prestigious investment banking prize by the Securities & Investment Institute. The Stephen Cooke Scholarship Programme commemorates the late Stephen Cooke, former senior partner of stockbroking firm, Gerrard Vivian Gray. These scholarships are only available to SII accredited Centres of Excellence, which are an elite group of universities including ourselves, selected by the SII as offering leadership in academic education, focused on financial markets.