it is the story of dave fishwick from burnley a successful local businessman who ran his own van/mini van sales firm.
he and his customers businesses were doing well until the credit crunch, banks then stopped lending his customers capital. they could not afford then to buy new vans etc. dave gave them credit himself.
fed up with this and all the stories about the banks, greedy bankers and their bonuses -
dave thought - why not start a bank? this then saw the start of a fantastic story of a unique man who did something enormous, wonderful, bonkers, fantastic, risky, phenomonal, bold and very brilliant.
dave set about opening his own bank, he started up with his own money. he was met with derision and scorn from bankers and experts. the fsa tried to block him at every turn and prevent him from acheiving his goal.
he is not allowed to call his bank a bank though or he could go to prison. it is called burnley savings and loan. the shop front says bank on dave.
dave found a way of taking and investing peoples savings to give them 5% interest. then dave went out to the community to lend this money to local businesses to help them start up, expand or stay afloat. meeting people face to face and looking them in the eye, seeing a business plan first hand and going on a gut feeling rather than a credit score.
as he says "banking the old fashioned way".
its the communities bank, run by the community, for the community.
any profit made by the bank will be given to charities in the local community.
dave hopes his model of a community bank will be copied and used all over the country.
i wont spoil too much what happened, its one of the most interesting, thought provoking watchable things ive seen on tv in years. it even had me cheering(something that doesnt happen often these days).honestly, it is brilliant. if you havent seen it you can catch all 3 episodes on 4 OD -
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/bank-of-dave/4od
YOU WONT BE DISSAPOINTED! i have to say the man is an absolute legend. one of the most compelling characters i have ever seen on tv. he is very driven, charismatic, down to earth, genorous, likeable, charming, funny, stubborn and a genius. hes got a few good catchphrases and is a little bit quirky. the people of burnley seem to love him, people from all over who met him seemed to instantly like him.
i have done a search on dave and the programme today and he has a lot of great press, so many messages of support on the internet and people from all over really like him and love his idea.
how do you feel about the idea of having a local community run bank based on daves model.good idea?
