Photo credit:   Paolo Margari

A dysfunctional financial sector led us to the brink of disaster in 2008, and yet bank reforms aren’t going far enough to tackle the root causes of the economic crisis. Our four big banks remain too big to fail, and continue to engage in the risky and unproductive activities that caused the crash. We need to establish a more stable, sustainable and socially useful banking system.

Key Facts

• The UK government pledged 89% of GDP to bail-out out our banks.
• 45% of Americans are members of their local credit union, compared to 2% of Britons.
• The UK banking sector is one of the least diverse in the developed world – local banks make up just 3%, compared to 67% in Germany and 34% in the USA.

Featured Work

Publication // March 28, 2013

Stakeholder Banks

Identifying successful alternatives to commercial banks.

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Blog post // December 19, 2012

Banks are still too big to fail

Banks occupy a unique position in our economy and enjoy privileges that other industries can never hope for. More

Publication // December 18, 2012

Exchange Traded Funds

While originally conceived as a cost efficient alternative to traditional asset management, which was frequently found to miss even its basic objectives, ETFs have since mutated into complicated, leveraged structures where investors have often unknown exposures to large investment banks. As a result, derivatives are being sold to the general public, despite people not having the expertise to understand that this will often result in the return on their investment differing significantly from the return on the underlying market that their money is tracking. More