In the provocative lead article of this summer’s issue of Studies, Professor Ray Kinsella addresses the chronic failure of banks “to reflectively engage with the moral implications of their decision-making processes on society”. Banks rely on relationships with the markets, he notes in ‘Bank Annual Reports: The place of sin, relationships and social metrics’, “but the single most important relationship that a bank has is with society, from which it gets its legitimacy”.
A retired Professor of Banking and Finance at University College Dublin, Dr Kinsella is uncompromisingly critical of the culture of the financial world. The issue, he believes, needs to be framed in moral terms – in terms of sin, guilt, and ‘purpose of amendment’. The Gospel’s parable of the unforgiving servant is invoked for its powerful and damning resonance with the behaviour of banks: “…those who, having been rescued by society, then pay out as much, and in some instances more, in dividends and bonuses; those who, having fuelled a mortgage boom and been recapitalised by society, then enforce a ‘no write-off’ policy, repossess the homes of the victims of their mistakes and write the profits back into their P&L account”.
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