Blackfriar: A sense of groundhog day at the bankers’ conference

But for all the banking industry’s protestation that it’s a changed beast, scandals including Libor interest rate-rigging, payment protection insurance mis-selling and flogging interest rate swaps to small businesses suggest otherwise.

Blackfriar has listened to the industry repeatedly call for an end to banker bashing for the past three years.

The annual British Bankers’ Association conference in London had a palpable air of déjà vu yesterday as the BBA’s new broom, Anthony Browne, insisted that banks have “radically changed” since the start of the crisis.

“Banking has entered a new era,” he said. “You could call it new model banking.”

But every fresh scandal which emerges points to a sector still with huge room for learning and improvement.

As the vocal chair of Parliament’s Treasury Select Committee, Andrew Tyrie, put it, there was a “sense of groundhog day” about the BBA conference.

“Things are not good in the banking sector and a lot needs to be done,” he said. “In a nutshell, bankers are not serving the interests of the wider economy as they should.”

Bonuses – something not available to most employees in other industries – are a symptom of this disconnect between bankers and the public.

While most people are happy to earn a salary, bonuses are firmly embedded in banking’s DNA – albeit not in the eye-wateringly large sums that were seen pre-crisis.

Bank of England Deputy Governor Paul Tucker’s call for senior bankers’ bonuses to be paid in debt seems a sensible one – so that if a bank fails, their own assets are at risk.

Somehow, banking needs to drag itself back into the public’s affections. It needs to re-establish a relationship with the public where banking is a profession people want to work in and are proud of.

A functioning economy needs good, well-run, profitable banks. Like them or not, they are crucial to escaping the down-turn.

But bankers must demonstrate their social value with actions, not just words, before their rehabilitation with the public can take root.

Credit lender International Personal Finance has put in a credible performance in difficult trading conditions.

The flat year-on-year profit performance was achieved despite the company having to absorb a £6.6m headwind as a result of adverse currency movements and early settlement rebates.

The Leeds-based group has managed to turn around profits in Mexico and profits also rose in Romania and Mexico following a tough first half.

New chief executive Gerard Ryan has plans to inject more growth into the business by taking on a little bit more credit risk.

This has its dangers and IPF needs to tread carefully.

There are signs that the German market is slowing and this could have an adverse impact on IPF’s customers in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Romania and Slovakia.

Analysts at Shore Capital have said they are also concerned about management plans to increase the number of financial products that agents sell.

These could potentially include an insurance product underwritten by a third party.

Shore Capital analyst Gary Greenwood said this could prove distracting to the agents’ core business of lending and collecting.

In such turbulent economic times maybe IPF needs to stick to its knitting.

IPF’s former sister company Provident Financial will report results for its third quarter tomorrow.

The Bradford-based company is bound to come under scrutiny after BBC current affairs programme Panorama went undercover and claimed that the group was lending money to vulnerable people including a schizophrenic woman.

After the programme aired earlier this month, Provident defended itself saying it would never deliberately lend to someone who it believed did not have the mental capacity to understand the credit agreement they were signing up to.

It added that it does not discriminate against those who may have some form of mental illness, yet who do have the mental capacity to understand their credit agreement.

When it comes to thick skins, Provident’s chief executive Peter Crook has the hide of a rhino.

The market is predicting upbeat results tomorrow, particularly at the group’s credit card operation Vanquis Bank.

Mr Crook has faced down criticism before and he’s likely to do so again.