The new voice of British banking: UK Finance launches today with new board members revealed
The British finance industry will be publicly represented from today by a single new body, UK Finance, after the merger of six separate lobby groups.
The new body, which officially starts operations today at Angel Court, behind the Bank of England, will represent over 300 British firms providing credit, banking, markets and payments services.
The body will be led by chief executive Stephen Jones, who stepped down from US private equity giant Cerberus to head the group. He has previously worked at Barclays, Citigroup and Schroders, and stepped down as finance director of Santander UK in 2015.
Bob Wigley, a City grandee who was formerly Europe, Middle East and Africa chairman of Merrill Lynch and an ex-member of the Court of the Bank of England, will chair UK Finance.
The board will include Standard Chartered banker and former head of enforcement Financial Conduct Authority chief, Tracey McDermott. She will join the chief executives of Barclays UK and HSBC UK, Ashok Vaswani and Ian Stuart, on the board.
The other board members are:
- John Jenkins, chief executive, Amicus Finance
- Paul Lynam, chief executive, Secure Trust Bank
- Joanna Elson OBE, chief executive, Money Advice Trust
- Jayne-Anne Gadhia, chief executive, Virgin Money
- David Duffy, chief executive, CYBG
- Clare Woodman, global chief operating officer, Morgan Stanley Institutional Securities Group
- Peter Smith, co-founder and chief executive, Blockchain
- Paul Gallagher, chief risk officer, UK, Nordics and Greece, Abn Amro
- Peter Hill, chief executive, Leeds Building Society
- Joe Garner, chief executive, Nationwide Building Society
- Ron Kalifa, vice chairman and executive director, Worldpay
- Miles Celic, chief executive, TheCityUK
- Vim Maru, group director, customer products and marketing, Lloyds Banking Group
- Mark Sismey-Durrant, chief executive, Hampshire Trust Bank
- James Bardrick, UK chief executive, Citigroup
UK Finance will take on a broad range of important responsibilities, including supplying regular public data on consumer credit and the mortgage market, on top of its major lobbying activities.
The formation of UK Finance marks the end of six separate lobby groups which served as the public face of Britain’s financial industries in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, as well as during the Libor benchmark rate-fixing and payment protection insurance (PPI) misselling scandals.
Read more: Voice of UK banks bows out with shots at EU over clearing and protectionism
The British Bankers’ Association (BBA), the Council of Mortgage Lenders and the Asset-Based Finance Association will be absorbed by the new body, along with Financial Fraud Action UK, Payments UK and the UK Cards Association.
The decision to merge the lobby groups was taken at the end of 2015, after a review found a single body would have a bigger impact and reduce duplication of effort, although there have been no compulsory redundancies so far, City PM understands. Some senior members of the bodies have stepped aside, however, with former BBA head Anthony Browne leaving at the end of a five-year term.
Stephen Jones, chief executive of UK Finance, said: “The boundaries between banking services are blurring, enabling the industry to become more efficient and customer-focused.”
“For the UK’s finance and banking sector, these changes present new opportunities and fresh challenges which require a coordinated voice to best support it going forward. UK Finance will be that fresh voice.”
UK banks' ranks: Household names slip down global ranking, but challengers make up ground