Dave Fishwick creates banking history in Burnley

Steven Baker MP says David Fishwick’s “tiny bank” is the model the world should move towards in the wake of the devastating financial crisis of 2008.

The Banking in Britain All Party Parliamentary Group chairman praised the work of the now world-famous Burnley Savings and Loans in a chapter on banking reform in a new NEF Banking 2020 Government book.

The minibus millionaire’s Keirby Walk “bank” has also helped rewrite a new chapter in banking history – being used as a new model for banking in the new parliamentary standards published last month.

Mr Fishwick said: “The Government is starting to take it very seriously. Parliament is using some of our ideas to push the banking standards forward to change banking in Britain.

“We are creating banking history here in Burnley which is great to be a part of.”

He added: “We couldn’t have got this far without the hard work of David Henshaw and the team.”

Steven Baker MP wrote about Mr Fishwick’s ground-breaking documentary “Bank of Dave”, saying: “It shows banking can be a simple entrepreneurial function providing a safe return to savers at the entrepreneur’s risk.

“Of course, thanks to regulators it is not actually a bank – it is a savings and loans firm. Whereas these route savings to borrowers, banks create credit.

“That is, a bank loans credit into existence.”

The MP said that this distinction and other features of the financial system had led the whole world into economic crisis.

He continued: “Yet astonishingly, David Fishwick has struck on a model of banking close to a theoretical ideal – he carries his own commercial risks and, even if he could deposit, he would not provide credit in excess of savings.”

Mr Baker MP added: “It is towards this model that the world should move.”