Dave Fishwick, the real-life British banker behind the hit Netflix movie "Bank of Dave" catapulted to stardom after a documentary series chronicled his Herculean efforts to open a local community bank, Burnley Savings and Loans in Britain.
Fishwick was already a self-made millionaire and minibus dealer when he began lending to local businesses in 2011. "Bank of Dave" chronicles the uphill battle Fishwick faced getting regulators to grant his bank a license — only the second banking license granted in Britain in 150 years.
Fishwick hopes the sequel — which is slated for release in 2025 — will shine a light on the practices of his new nemesis: The payday lending industry.
"I dislike them with a passion," Fishwick said in an interview. "I feel they prey on the poor and the vulnerable."
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Earlier this month, Fishwick spoke to bankers in Washington D.C. at the Independent Community Bankers of America's Capitol Summit, where he was made an honorary member. He has become an ambassador for community banks, speaking worldwide about the need for more support of local banks due to branch closings and for more targeted regulations.
The following interview was edited for length and clarity:
American Banker: Bankers and banks are often vilified in the movies. But many have called "Bank of Dave" a modern-day version of "It's a Wonderful Life.'' Tell us about it.
Dave Fishwick: What happened in England is there was a documentary series called Bank of Dave that was made about me and the team, myself and partner
We went up against the big banks right at the beginning. We wanted to open a community bank, the Bank of Dave, to help people get the best rate of interest on the
Bankers are important people and they're the people that are needed. We do need some bankers and banks. We need honest, ethical, moral people who are doing it for the right reasons and doing it not because they need the wages. They're doing it because they believe in what they're doing. I've got some bankers working for me who are career bankers, and they are really good people.
AB: Why is it so hard to get a bank license?
Fishwick: We've now lent over $50 million to thousands of people and businesses all over the UK. There's a huge need for what we do in our community. And the licenses we've got, it's like a mixture of licenses at the moment. We've got a bunch of licenses that all fit together to allow us to do the things we want to do. They allow us to do mortgages, to do personal loans, to hold money, and an anti-money laundering license, to name just a few. And they all fit together.
What we want is a check-clearing license, which is the one that we're going for now, but I think that's probably another year to 18 months away. But we've got the licenses to do what I want to do at the moment. Each time we get a little bit nearer, we move a little bit further forward. Unfortunately here in Britain, we haven't got something like the ICBA. Unfortunately here in Britain, there's just me, David Henshaw and my team and the lawyers and everybody that works with me. Each challenge is met by a huge barrage of problems from the regulators and the big banks because they do not want me to exist. And what makes me very cross about that is [that] in 2008, the banks crashed like they did in the USA and they were bailed out by the taxpayer.
Royal Bank of Scotland here was run by a guy that we called Fred the Shred, who lost billions of pounds of the taxpayers money and he was given a knighthood. And here I am helping people to get the best rate of interest, I'm lending to businesses who can't borrow from the High Street banks, and I'm a terrible person here in the UK. But in America, I win awards.
AB: The movie 'Bank of Dave' did really well in the U.S. Why do you think it resonated?
Fishwick: The movie was released December 18th, and within three days it was there in the top 10 alongside Tom Cruise's Mission Impossible. Netflix has been really, really helpful and they are massively supportive of what we do and it's been a real breath of fresh air to work with Netflix, who really believe in community banking. I've met the big bosses, and they came to the premiere and we got the fastest commissioned sequel in Netflix's history.
The 'Bank of Dave' is the most successful independent British film on Netflix ever made. Normally they spend hundreds of millions getting to No. 1 around the world and they didn't spend that. Now, the second one is much bigger. There are fantastic, huge American stars. You'll see lots of actors from America in this one that you'll recognize. America is where a lot of the payday loan company bosses are.
AB: The sequel, 'Bank of Dave II,' is coming out early next year. Tell us about the movie and this new passion of yours going after the payday lending industry.
Fishwick: I do feel the payday loans — they're loan sharks, they're terrible people. In just the last few weeks, I've just done a program for ITV, Good Morning Britain, here in the UK. And it's the biggest and fastest growing news story of this year for ITV News.
In the documentary series, 'The Lone Ranger,' we take them on and we come up with a better way for more community lending, or being able to dig these poor people out of the payday loan debt and get them into an affordable loan that eventually they're going to pay off. But in the documentary series, as in the movie, you will see that it's much more difficult than it looks to be able to find these people to pay them.
I think sometimes in life you've got to think how to break something, to be able to learn how you can fix it and make sure you don't go near there again. People don't have access in the community to funds and they need money from somewhere.
AB: What do you want to tell bankers that you've learned about banking?
Fishwick: What is clear that I've learned over the last 12 years is the basic legislation around banking, in effect precludes the formation and operation of small community banks, not just here in the UK, but in America and Australia. I went to Australia and I met an awful lot of people in Australia that have exactly the same problem as we have in the USA and the UK.
There seems to be a one-size-fits-all model which simply is not proportionate to the operation of a small, local deposit-taking institution and credit facilities. And I don't mean credit unions. I feel credit unions are actually getting in the way of the community banks. They don't pay taxes, they don't contribute to society, and they are probably getting in the way of the American community banks.
I feel that we've been very badly served by the big banks and we need change. One of my real bugbears is that the big banks just are not interested in customers anymore, they're only interested in taking money in or giving people very little interest and then sending that money into the stock markets and investments ini the credit default swaps and things that I call 'financial weapons of mass destruction.' And if it goes well the banker makes a fortune in bonuses, and if it goes badly the taxpayer bails them out. They've got a no-lose situation.
AB: You're advocating for local community banks that in your words "challenge the system," yet Burnley Savings and Loans has fewer than 20 employees. How can small banks emulate what you're doing?
Fishwick: What we do is very old-fashioned, but we do it better than the big banks. David Henshaw has taught my team to manually underwrite and that's a skill that has been lost in the world today and he has brought it back. Most of my staff has been with me over a decade. We have about 14 full-time employees and another five or six and a few other volunteers. We're a very small operation making a big noise all over the world. We've proved that you can have a community financial institution in every town or village across the UK or America that is run by people like us.
We are 100% capitalized. We only lend out money that comes in. And my money guarantees everybody's money. I call it Granny's money, because I think of it in my head as Granny's money and then nobody could ever lose it. So there is no chance of us crashing.
We're very much asset-based. If somebody wants a wagon, or a truck for their business, or a piece of machinery, we like lending on that sort of asset. We also do lots with cars and we've just started doing mortgages. I own six businesses. We've been incredibly successful and very lucky in lots of ways and I put that behind Burnley Savings and Loan so I give a personal guarantee for every single penny. And it could be rolled out all over the world with that model. There's lots of people who love the place they live and they could become the entrepreneur behind it and that's what you need.
KB: Why do you think that regulators and big banks are making it so difficult for small banks?
Fishwick: Regulations and computer systems need to be proportionate to the size of the community bank that you are opening. This is one of the problems that America's got. The regulators and the powers that be, I think sometimes are governed by the big banks behind the scenes, and are trying to make it so difficult for a community bank to open. And they're doing that for a reason. They're making it so you can't be a problem to their future earnings by keeping you to a very small size. Here in the UK, you need to have $50 million or $60 million worth of computer systems to even think about opening a standard bank. Why would you want $50 million of equipment to let in less than $50 million out?
If I can use my brand and movies to help community banks get a fairer go, a fairer crack, and maybe get some of the regulators and some of the powers that be to have a listen. Community banks work for the community to benefit that community and they are the way forward all over the world. If we can build as many community banks in as many communities as possible, then that stops the big banks having a monopoly. If the big banks are too big to fail then they're too big to exist, and that's the problem with some of the really big banks.
AB: You got into banking after growing several businesses. How does the industry attract more people?
Fishwick: Unfortunately, banking isn't an interesting subject. It isn't like Formula One. It feels a little bit boring. A lot of people don't want to write about it. What I try to do is I try to make it a little bit fun, I try to make it interesting. I try to get people to understand and tell people in layman's terms exactly how things work, because that's how I had to understand it. And I really understand the whole banking industry. And then I stand at the front and then I get the media interested in things with television and programs and movies and radio and podcasts and newspapers and magazines. And then I'll let career bankers, like the team you have at the ICBA, who really understand, put their point forward.
We've got to get young people using community banks. We've got to get them to understand. Young people love green technology, and they probably don't want to work with a faceless bank.
Burnley Savings and Loans has the ability for all our customers to be in the cloud. But we also have all transactions written down on a pad and that goes into the safe every night. If we burned down this afternoon, we have the backup for everything. I think there's an argument to have a community bank app but also to have a community bank for people like my mom who wants to be able to come in and talk about fraud, deception, deceit, if they get a bad phone call about somebody trying to steal money out of their account.
AB: You speak very highly about bankers.
Fishwick: Bankers are important people and they're the people that are needed. I've got some bankers working for me who are career bankers, and they are honest, ethical and moral people who believe in what they're doing.
I think it's important for young people to understand the benefits of having a community bank. The problem is you either use them or lose them. There are 54 branches closing every month in the UK. Banks need to concentrate on lending more money and give hard work and serve us a better interest rate. I think banks have forgotten why they were put there in the first place and I think that we need to concentrate on helping the public and speaking about the positives of community banks.
