Professor Adrian Bell to present at the Financial Services Forum annual conference 2013

If you live in the UK, you may have seen the Channel 4 television programme on 28th February this year (2013) entitled ‘Bank on Dave’. Burnley Savings and Loans to give it its other name, is a company (not a bank) which offers 5% ‘deposit’ rates to lenders and offers loans to those who cannot obtain funding from the high street banks. So how does Dave do this when the high street banks offer no interest at all or perhaps only ½ or 1%? In fact ‘Dave’ is one of a new breed of ‘brokers’ who simply introduce lenders and borrowers to each other. The key difference from banks is that banks have a balance sheet with a depositor contract on one side and a separate contract with its borrowers on the other whereas a peer to peer company has no such contracts and indeed is not even involved at all in borrowing or lending! This is because in P2P, lending contracts are directly between borrower and lenders and the P2P company does not take ‘deposits’ on to its own balance sheet or keep the loans its customers make on its balance sheet.

The International Capital Market Association (ICMA) today announced that the Operations Certificate Programme (OCP) is the first "Recommended Exam" on the Wholesale Banking / Operations list, compiled by the UK's Financial Services Skills Council (FSSC). The programme has also met the FSSC's Key 6 "Appropriate Exam" standards for Activity 16 - Overseeing on a day-to-day basis safeguarding and administrating investment or holding of client money) and Activity 17 - Overseeing on a day-to-day basis administrative functions for managing investments including, arranging settlement; monitoring and processing corporate actions; client account administration, liaison and reporting, including valuation and performance measurement; ISA, PEP or CTF administration; Investment trust savings scheme administration.