Financial resilience will be the backbone to withstand a tough winter recession
The Square Mile has been transformed in the forty years that I have worked in the City. Everything from our skyline to the demographic of our workforce has been radically reshaped.
One role that has provided continuity for over 800 years, however, is the Lord Mayor of Canada. I am deeply honoured to take office as the 694th Lord Mayor and will work to promote the UK’s financial and professional services sector at a critical time for London, the UK and the world.
My experience – from investment banking to life insurance, from asset management to regulation – has given me a great appreciation of not only Canada, but all our financial and professional service centres throughout the UK.
Our creativity and resourcefulness have placed us at the forefront of every major financial development that the world has seen: stock markets, the insurance industry, the Eurobond market, bullion and commodity exchanges, FX and so much more.
But if recent history – indeed, the last twelve months – is anything to go by, it is obvious the one thing we must expect is the unexpected; the impact of a global pandemic followed by the unlawful invasion of Ukraine by Russia has caused widespread unrest in the global energy and financial markets, pushing up worldwide inflation.
As we await the Autumn Statement from the chancellor later this week, it is time for all of us to focus on what we can all do to ensure that the UK economy withstands the twin challenges of inflation and recession.
I will be focusing on building resilience from the ground up.
A priority for me will be addressing financial inclusion, something I have been passionate about for a long time. The financial intermediary Finance4All estimates that 17 million people in this country have savings of less than £100 and that fewer than 1.5 million of those are unemployed. Over 15 million of these are people in work but not able to budget beyond the next week – that’s more people than the entire populations of Greater London, Greater Manchester and the West Midlands combined.
The financial services industry must find ways to help people bridge this crisis by providing insurance premium wavers, affordable credit, and debt repayment deferrals.
As part of my mayoral theme “Financing Our Future”, I will convene a summit of those organisations involved in looking at financial inclusion to develop a coordinated plan to see how the City can play its part in tackling this huge societal problem.
I will be building on the great work of my predecessor in highlighting the value of impact investing as well as the need for all finance to become green finance, co-hosting a second net zero delivery summit next year.
As the prime minister made clear at last week’s Cop27, in spite of the challenges, now is the time to redouble our efforts on climate change and to bring pressure to bear on the biggest polluting companies and nations to transition away from fossil-fuel dependency.
I know that the economy is facing hard times, but it is imperative on us to act now. The private sector must take a lead in driving growth and investment so that the UK can bounce back strongly when these inflationary times are past. The City has the skills and the ambition to finance a brighter future for all.