Giving the sixth annual ICAS Aileen Beattie Memorial Lecture
recently, Douglas Flint CA, the Group Chairman of HSBC Holdings PLC, said that
while the financial crisis was a “great opportunity to move things forward to
learn lessons, [and] to fix things that need fixing”, it was also an
opportunity for some “to take advantage of people’s fear of repetition to offer
seductively attractive remedies that only address symptoms rather than causes”.
As well as addressing the fixes needed in the financial
system, Flint said, it was important offer a positive vision and “to focus on
what we want the wider financial system and banks in particular to do”.
Flint said
restoration of confidence was important to recovery, and if this were to happen
there needed to trust in leaders, in their motives and their data.
He emphasised the
importance of behaviour: “the greatest opportunity for improvement will come
from defining, teaching, reinforcing, rewarding and enforcing values in terms
of behaviour”.
If behavioural values are to be relied upon it requires
trust in organisations, Flint said. Assurance that this trust has been earned
has to be built into the system.
He urged regulatory and public policy bodies to think more
deeply about how to understand - “and if necessary shape” - the character and
culture of the organisations critical to the financial system.
He said people should
“care more about tone from the top, how individuals are screened for
behavioural characteristics when recruited or promoted, how ethics and values
are taught and reinforced, how values are enforced and rewarded”.
Flint listed the elements
he felt needed to be embraced: “independence of thought, character, judgment,
accountability, responsibility, a duty that goes beyond one’s own self-interest
or the narrow interest of one’s employer to one’s underlying principles and
integrity”.
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