The Banking Standards Board (BSB) was a body established in April 2015 in the
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
, to promote good practice among
bank
A bank is a financial institution that accepts Deposit account, deposits from the public and creates a demand deposit while simultaneously making loans. Lending activities can be directly performed by the bank or indirectly through capital m ...
s and
building societies
A building society is a financial institution owned by its members as a mutual organization, which offers banking institution, banking and related financial services, especially savings and mortgage loan, mortgage lending. They exist in the Unit ...
. The original idea for the body came from the work of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards and the subsequent Lambert Review, which called for a new type of organisation, different from traditional regulators, that would look at banking standards, culture and the root causes of poor behaviour. The BSB was renamed the Financial Services Culture Board and then closed in June 2023.
Governance
The organisation was funded by the banks, but acts independently of them through its mission and a board composed primarily of non-bankers. The first chair of the BSB was
Dame Colette Bowe. She was appointed by a selection committee chaired by the Governor of the Bank of England,
Mark Carney
Mark Joseph Carney (born March 16, 1965) is a Canadian politician and economist who has served as the 24th and current Prime Minister of Canada, prime minister of Canada since 2025. He has served as Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, lead ...
. She was followed as chair by
Susan Rice (banker) in 2019.
Sir Brendan Barber served as vice-chair, and
Alison Cottrell was the CEO of the organisation.
The work of the BSB
The BSB conducted annual assessments of culture and behaviour at UK banks and building societies, and reported publicly on the state of the sector in its annual reports.
The organisation's approach to assessing culture combines methods from economics, behavioural science, data science and ethnography,
and has been described by
Gillian Tett as "anthropologists with big data trying to use ways to track what bankers are doing, what they're feeling, to work out whether they have a good culture or not".
The BSB's work has highlighted gaps between ethical behaviour and banking activities, pressure and stress in the banking system,
and concerns with speaking up.
Beyond the UK banking sector, elements of the BSB's culture assessments have also been conducted for Irish banks, at the New York Federal Reserve and in insurance markets.
Criticism
Members of the Treasury Committee examining the work of the BSB in 2018 criticised the slow progress made on fixing the UK's banking culture.
References
{{Reflist
External links
* https://financialservicescultureboard.org.uk/
Banks established in 2015
2015 establishments in the United Kingdom