Published on 5 November 2019

I have taken on the role for one year of chair of the trade association for the UK’s Payment Institutions. This is the Association of UK Payment Institutions and I will be attempting, as my main focus, to resolve the issue around bank accounts in the UK.

Since UK banks have started their process of de-risking, it has become far more difficult for Payment Institutions serving specific communities in the UK to carry on business on acceptable terms. Official and industry efforts to reduce the supply of cash in the economy have not helped either.

At the global level the Financial Standards Board has a multi-year programme looking into the effects of de-risking on correspondent banking, and there is a sub-stream for Remittances recognising how the drivers on correspondent banking have a disproportionate trickle-down into the Remittances market because, by their nature, Remittances flow into countries that, by one measure or the other (and there are no shortage of suppliers of negative measures), can be labelled as high risk.

So far whatever optimism and effort has gone in at the global level has become dissipated by the time it reaches the interface between PIs and banks in the UK, and I will be trying to rectify that if it is within my power.