Why slow finance will happen here first

 By epSos.de

Italy gave is the idea of slow food. The USA gave us slow money. It may be that the idea of ‘slow finance’, the title of a book by the fund manager Gervais Williams, may emerge in the UK.

nef’s head of banking and finance, Tony Greenham, is introducing a lecture by Williams next month.

The idea is that, just as slow food was a reaction against the development of the international food industry, which was undermining the variety, history and sheer glory of food, a similar process may be beginning in finance.

It is certainly true that, like food miles, finance miles have been increasing dramatically in recent years – so that investment decisions are taken continents away, using ubiquitous risk software.

That undermines variety. It certainly undermines local economies, which require human judgement to make local investment decisions. It is precisely local economies that the finance industry has been turning its back on, certainly in the UK, just as it has been turning its back on the real economy in favour of the speculative one.

What was fascinating about slow food was that it managed to reach back into the past and adapt traditional tastes, breeds and techniques, but without being backward-looking.  It modernised them and made them possible, and enriched us by doing so.

Slow food has thrived because of the authenticity at the heart of the idea, and there is a yearning among people for what is real, unadulterated, unmarketed, unspun – not just for that, of course, but it is an important trend, as I’ve argued before. 

Why in the UK?  Because that is where the yearning for authenticity is strongest and it is where problem is worst in finance. Where our dwindling nunber of local bank branches is becoming scandalously low (Newhaven is about to lose its last bank), where the choice of banks is so narrow, where the charges for our savings and pensions are so astronomical.

This is where slow finance is going to happen first, but not by itself. We have to make it happen.