How To Sign Georgia Banking Contract

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[Music] hello and welcome i'm alex fraser chief executive of libf in this series i talk to members of our international advisory board about important topics affecting the financial services industry today and for the future in this interview i'm pleased to welcome richard burge chief executive of the london chamber of commerce to discuss the impact of covid and brexit on trade london banking and much more enjoy i guess which you couldn't have wished for a more challenging time to take up your new role no i couldn't i was in the office for seven weeks when along with all my 100 colleagues i left with a laptop and a banner under my arm and then didn't come back for three months so yes it was it was interesting taking over an organization that went along into an immediate crisis but not a christ of his own making a crisis which it shared with all our neighbours throughout the city of london uh and throughout broader london as well so um it was curious yeah and you've been uh very vocal in the media about the the impact of kobe dance that caused the uh impending impact of brexit how are your members coping in such a challenging time well most of them are almost punch drunk um i think they've they've had to focus very heavily on covid and they've all been focusing very much on their cash and the message we gave them is that cash is is king and it's even more king more regal uh in a time like this um so uh that's what they've been doing just trying to manage their cash flow in and out and we as a business were doing exactly the same uh we effectively stopped producing management accounts and just focused on their cash accounts to make sure we had control of the money going in and out and i think in that process businesses uh two things happened one was the one they hadn't expected such a volatile covered environment the different tiers coming in lockdown's occurring lockdowns failing other businesses responding their client base and their supply base is responding in different ways they found it very very turbulent and the other thing was they sort of forgot brexit um and the particular things they forgot about brexit were around the new documentation and the new requirements so suddenly they found uh banking access to banking in other countries uh europe was suddenly being restricted because their bank wasn't going to get a license in country x suddenly that account was going to close and they started hearing about these strange documents called export basically customs declarations and certificates of origin and carne's and uh most british businesses are curious 60 of british businesses who export export only to the european union so effectively they haven't been exporting they've simply been delivering goods or receiving goods so this whole new wonderful world of trade in an international sense has hit them uh right between the eyes and i think it's only now uh that it's they're beginning to realize what they need to face and what is the role of the chamber in helping businesses overcome these hurdles and obstacles relationships with your peers and counterparts around the world yeah so the chamber network is is vast it's been going since the 1500s i mean it was the mid-1500s the first chamber of commerce was founded in marseille uh and it's grown from there the majority of chambers particularly in the big world cities emerged in the mid eight mid to late eighteen hundreds um and they are they are a strong network of independent organizations so we all have the same approach to life we are geographic there are no chambers which are if you like sector specific we're all geographic um and we all are based around the concept of people meeting businesses different types of businesses meeting and they use that as a way of understanding the world they're in trying to get that world to change to benefit them all and to enable them to do business together so we still stick with that our job is to to find the common ground of problems and and issues that businesses face and to go to the people who are responsible for causing those largely government um to change them uh and to provide opportunities for our businesses to learn from each other uh and to sell each other goods and services and so that's basically what that's basically what it is and we we will continue in that way except the manner of which companies work is changing rapidly i think for i think in three ways one is the role of chambers in world cities now is very distinct from chambers elsewhere for instance um i'm world cities tend to be intermediaries in the trade between other countries so keep reminding people that we are just as interested in helping uh egypt do business with kazakhstan if there are london-based companies who can help that process i'm not just interested in egypt's trade with britain and britain's trade with egypt so i think that's a phenomenon of a world city um the second thing is digitization has changed the manner in which business is done and i think covid if you like has accelerated the potential of that now that's causing huge disruption in the if you like the the support ecosystem of great cities like london but it does provide huge opportunities for people to work in different ways and the third thing is i think and it's partly digitization but it's partly societal things as well we're getting a lot of people coming into business and setting up businesses who would never have set them up before in other words they would have been brilliant young people going into a major company who would then nurture their talents put them in the research department develop products now i think we're in a world much more where startups are being run by people who never thought about running a business they just got a brilliant idea so they're not in business to do business they're in business to basically get their idea into the market they run their business not to become a multinational and to grow and to hand it over to their children they run their business to the extent that they then hope some big player will then come and buy it off them and then they can get their beach house in california or shore and by sea um and um and live the life they want to live so i think those are three big changes occurring and if like covid has just accelerated all through and uh the last uh crisis that we will live through was very much uh caused by negligence on the part of banks this time around they seem to have earned the trust or re-earned the trust of the public and you know what what role will they play both now and in the aftermath of the pandemic well i think a large number of banks have earned the trust to the public some um have seriously disappointed their customers um i think one i think the two things we think i think we need to learn and to act upon one is that banking is now an essential service it's no longer an option uh you people aren't using cash anymore if you want to interact with government or get a grant from them in a time of crisis or sort out your rates or pay your taxes in all time do you need a bank account and so as a consequence of that i think there now needs to be a license for operate to operate for retail banks and particularly uh banks that reta have retail their retail customers are largely businesses so i think uh in return for banking now being an essential service so banks know that everyone has to have an account really otherwise i don't know how you'd exist off-grid without an account now uh there the the quid pro quo is the banks will have a license to operate and they will have service obligations they have to fulfill and they have to fulfill them whether they like them or not if they want to be a bank um and then the second thing i think um what we've learned about banking is that i think this is a good thing i think we've re-learned how important human to human interaction is in retail banking and business banking i think there were too many banks who sort of saw the retail bank as the poor arm it gave them some publicity but really they were into investment management and all that i think they're beginning to realize there is good business to be had in business banking and some of the insurgent banks have demonstrated that um but i think what they've also demonstrated is the value of that human to human interaction and if anything if banks were found wanting uh in the financial crisis is because too many of them were operating on algorithms when dealing with their businesses so we had absurd situations where the government wanted to provide um grants to people in hospitality in the night time industry in london and there was one bank which basically had a policy of not lending to nighttime industry nobody had ever heard of this policy before it was just there and then you had other banks who basically just didn't know their customers at all they operated completely from algorithms and they'd lost that basic skill of interaction so i'm not saying we're going back to the old days of having a bank manager on every caller although there are there is one insurgent bank in the city of london that's making a real he's actually carving a very very very strong metro bank in doing that it and it doesn't even call them banks it calls them short stores where you do have that personal interaction it's very important to them that you as a business have got to be have your office or your you know what you call your place of work within walking distance of their store so i think there is going to be this second thing which is understanding the personality that goes behind the business and therefore the personality that needs to go behind a bank and i think that plays to the huge strength of london particularly the city of london but also broader central london because it is an ecosystem of individuals it's not an ecosystem of computers so the the good old days the um bankers having to understand the balance sheet rather than an algorithm that's yeah and i think the other pressure is going to come across is accountability for businesses i mean businesses now uh as we know in london in the uk businesses have to put their statement about modern slavery uh they have now have to make esg statements which are becoming more demanding within the next few years they're going to have to be producing emissions statements and proof and validation that these things are are in place and so bankers are going to have to understand their businesses more than the balance sheet so yes they're going to have to get back to understanding the balance sheets of individual businesses they have to understand the character of those businesses they've got to understand what those businesses do um and the other thing they've got to do is understand the obligations that those businesses have to wider society and to their investors and we've now got a position where pension funds in the uk have to make esg statements if it goes the way of modern slavery statements those will get more and more detailed it won't be sufficient to pay some you know some character 500 quid to write you a paragraph you're going to have to produce evidence of the way in which you pursue that and you maintain those standards uh so validation verification of if you like non-financial asset your non-financial asset base is going to be very important and bankers are going to have to learn that language you talk richard about the you know the position of london as a it's a global heartburn for city and and wider i think greater london [Music] when we read about the speed at which some [Music] asian countries and cities are recovering from covid and with the added distractions instead of brexit will london take a bit of time to re-establish itself as a group it will um and i think it's going to have to be uh both ambitious and determined but also patient with itself as well it you know we have taken in the uk a decision i did not agree with at the time but i completely accepted what's happening we're leaving we've left the european union i think the european union is now a different place to the place it was when we were a member of it so i don't think going back even if it was a desirable option would be possible um so we've left and and that's a decision we've taken and we are we haven't really thought in too much detail or at least our political masters about what that means apart from a few slogans about using the word sovereignty and independence liberally um without meaning or depth uh but there we are so we've now got to proceed and carve our way in the world but i think there are huge advantages to to to the uk and particularly to london it's got the ecosystem the people are here and they like living here so as soon as our theaters reopen our bars dude ronnie scott's as one of my favorite horns reopens you know we're we're back in a city that everyone wants to live in and i'm not you know no names no patrol but there are a lot of cities in europe where frankly you wouldn't mind working but hardly going to set your heart a flutter um in in terms of living there so i think there's the asset base of london that you know the bloodstream of it is it's not our work it's our pleasure um i think there are also huge other advantages the usual ones like time zone and everything but compared to a lot of emerging cities in uh the rest of the world i think the one advantage london is now developing is that we are a place where um judges are independent uh neutral and can be bloody minded and they also tend to have this principle that if you've signed a contract you will fulfill the contract um they are not judges on whom uh political expediency um becomes a factor either openly or covertly so frankly um you know we if would i wish to um appear with a commercial dispute in front of a donald trump appointed judge in the united states where the united states company kajang just turn around say well we're a national security issue no i wouldn't would i would i really want my mediation to be held in a chinese center i'm not sure i would because chinese are very open about it um you know companies in china have a distinct and person a deliberate relationship with the state and with the party that is the chinese system uh that's the way they do it it's not for me to say whether that's good or bad but it does mean that the chinese company in an arbitration in china has a particular place to play so i think if you want neutral contract focused arbitration if you want neutral mediation to get you and that and your business partner back on the road to doing business together i think london is is the place to do that so it's got both the legal system but also it's got the ecosystem to support making that happen so i think there are huge advantages to london and then the final thing i think is is um the whole esg green finance climate change emissions these are these are now massive issues if you are a business of whatever size and you don't think these impact to you then i pack up now you know sell your assets while you can um because these are crucial issues and then you know the london institute of banking finance have recognized that with the work you're doing on sustainable finance and the training of people in understanding what sustainable finance means so i think this is this is a huge opportunity for london because again it has the university infrastructure behind it to make that happen and some of them particularly on the imperial kings university college london in amongst many but those are the key ones are institutions who can provide the necessary scientific backing and very cutting edge backing and then literally walk down the road you've got places like city university and the london institute of banking and finance to basically translate that into a form that makes sense in the world of banking and finance and professional services so i'm optimistic's the wrong word um i am determined that's what we should be doing in london and i feel very positive that we can deliver it so richard before i let you go um obviously we as soon as you said we're focused very much on on banking and uh education at all different levels um one of london's uk's key exports have been education do you think that's going to be in any way jeopardized by the government's decision to reduce development funding a significant proportion of which was education-based in its broader sense and if so how can we replace that if we can at all well i i think it i think it will be impacted um and it will impact on our ability to deliver i think it's a stupid move um it uh it undermines our credibility we promise to do it and now apparently we're not promising to do it so not a good move but that's the government's decision uh we will campaign very hard to get that reversed because i think it is the wrong thing to do both financially um and and also in terms of principle but on the other hand i think there is something about a british based education i think we're all getting better at the whole business of online learning i think we're getting clever at it it's not just simply a question of sending somebody a pdf and then i'm doing a multiple choice test online i think it's much more sophisticated like that particularly the business of of having online learning supplemented by trained tutors um and facilitators in country um i think that we we should be absolutely brilliant and i think in many ways we are brilliant at that at the uk supplemented by the fact that we have education institutes here which are incredibly welcoming to to foreigners um and have the ability to to to manage both followers coming in for full degrees but also to do partial programs and mixed programmes and we in terms of our ability to be truly culturally inclusive and integrated and diverse education providers london is is second to none second to none richard burch thank you so much for your time this morning and for your challenges over the next few months thank you very much [Music] you