Policies to get banking oriented to customer benefit rather than profit. Pointers on how to establish and run a Scottish Central Bank.
Banking has lost its way, forgetting that it should be serving its customers and not exploiting them. But it’s not just the way banks operate, it’s whether people can even get access to proper banking with more and more branches closing. Common Weal believes both can be fixed with a mutually-owned People’s Bank. How this would be done is explained in the report Better Banking which proposes using an existing ‘bank in a box’ model. This is a preprepared model for a banking network which would initially be set up by government but would then be passed into the ownership of its customers. It has a full business plan and it would be able to open branches (or mini-branches via a ‘banking pod’ model) in any community where enough people joined the bank. It is particularly designed not to make profit from customers and to emphasise long-term, trusting relationships. These are particularly important to small businesses.