FairBanking is a research-based charity
The FairBanking Foundation has a clear charitable objective: To encourage and assist banking providers to improve the financial well-being of their customers
Core beliefs
The Foundation has been set up in the belief that banking providers owe a duty of care to their customers and to the country as a whole; that they should act in the ‘common good’. As water companies are obliged to provide a product to their customers that is healthy and good for them, so too should banks, building societies etc.
Although the recent banking crisis occurred after FairBanking was set up, its huge impact on the UK economy and the necessity for vast taxpayer-funded bail outs have served to underline the increasingly widespread view that banks do indeed have a responsibility to act in the common good.
Another cornerstone of FairBanking’s beliefs is that customers who are enjoying improved financial well-being will be happier, more loyal to their banking providers and more likely to buy additional products and services. In turn, banking providers should enjoy much more positive relationships with their customers, leading ultimately to mutual financial benefit.
It is important to note that FairBanking is not a lobbying body and is not overtly ‘consumerist’ - its approach is objective and evidence-based and recognises the best outcome in the long term is a market in which the interests of the customer, the banking industry and the country as a whole are appropriately and sensibly aligned.
Action plan
In progressing our work against this objective, The Foundation firstly carried out extensive research and exploration to formally identify what precisely customer “financial well-being” is and what drives it. The report “Fairbanking
: The road to redemption for UK banks” shares the results and conclusions of this work.
Establishing this crucial definition and understanding of financial well-being was clearly a pivotal step and informs all that FairBanking does in its ongoing work.
To deliver further against its charitable objective, FairBanking has shared its first report far and wide, obtained significant media coverage of its findings and conclusion, mainly within the UK but also abroad.
FairBanking’s subsequent work has sought to find a mechanism by which banking providers can be encouraged and assisted to improve the financial well-being of their customers. A key step in this has been to see if it is possible to rate banking core products for the financial well-being they engender. This work was successful and the first results shared in the report “FairBanking Ratings: Socially Useful Banking”.
FairBanking is now seeking to engage more closely with banking providers across the UK, through the largest survey of banking products ever conducted in the UK. The results of this survey will be used to update the financial well-being ratings and will be published in a new report in the first half of 2011. The results of the survey will also provide the logical starting point for the Foundation’s next major initiative – the FairBanking Mark.
The FairBanking Mark will be available for current accounts, savings products and credit cards put forward to FairBanking to be assessed and researched with customers. The Mark will be awarded in three, four and five star versions.
This new system for rating key financial products will provide customers and the industry with an unprecedented clarity around the relative strengths of mainstream products from a financial well-being point of view.
