Now that we are almost halfway through January, I realised it would be good to look back at the themes of Boomer Banker in its first year. And what a year to begin a blog. I suspect many will regard 2020 as a historic year of events ranking up there with 1968 and 1848. In looking at my posts, I realised that there were three large themes throughout the year – themes we are likely to continue to see in 2021. These are:
- A visible shift among investors to focus on more than short term financial returns,
- A clear consensus that climate change is real and banks must do their part to address it, and
- Bankers behaving badly – when will banking culture lead to better banker behaviour
Relative to the investor focus I think my post on 13 December provides the best summary of the change. This post focused on the essays published by the Booth School and edited by Luis Zingales. Clearly a milestone in investor thinking when the home of Milton Friedman takes on a nuanced challenge to his thinking. My very first post (actually in December 2019) covered research sponsored by Deloitte, European Investment Bank and the Global Alliance for Banking on Values that shows banks with a more sustainable approach provided better financial returns. This conclusion was further covered in my post of 7 December that referred to a useful opinion piece in the Financial Times noting financial returns are not everything.
Climate change has generally moved up in importance for setting bank strategies albeit with some retrograde actions from US regulators. A book on the little ice age provided me with some new insights on climate change as noted in a post in February. Finance Watch came with specific actions banks could take as covered in a June post. And development of standards moved forward as noted in September. But along with this progress on making climate change a key issue for banks, there were two actions by US regulators covered in August and November that are intended to make it more difficult for banks to be activists in addressing climate change.
Bankers behaving badly kept surfacing throughout the year. The year began with a post on how banks use clever legal structures to effectively steal taxes from governments. Throughout the year there were posts on questionable banking practices at Wells Fargo, Deutsche Bank and Goldman among others. In September I posted on the importance of culture to address these issues – spending more on compliance will never solve the problems of bad behaviour.
But perhaps the most personally important post was not about bankers behaving badly but rather about how the banking system can be a source of positive change. Noting the passing of Sir Fazle Abed in January was meaningful to me as I had the honour of working with him and learning from him whilst at the Global Alliance for Banking on Values. He represents what bankers, and individuals, should be.
So a year has passed and 2021 started with ongoing stress from COVID-19, economic turmoil and political unrest. And the climate keeps getting warmer. I am sure there will be no end of topics to cover this year as well.
