When a bank takes money that does not belong to it, returning that money is not generosity. It is justice.
Compensation is simply giving back to consumers what was taken — no more, no less. Yet every time the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) dares to enforce redress, the same chorus rises from the banking sector: it’s too costly, it will harm jobs, it will shrink credit.
Let’s be clear: this money doesn’t belong to the banks. It belongs to the people. In what other realm of life could someone steal and then plead that returning the stolen goods would be bad for the economy?
Santander’s UK boss, Mike Regnier, has urged the government to overrule the FCA’s proposed motor finance redress scheme — warning of “unintended consequences” for jobs, growth, and the car industry. Lloyds, Barclays, and others have echoed this refrain, arguing that the cost of compensating victims will “wipe out decades of profitability.”
That statement alone should give us pause.
If returning what was wrongly taken erases twenty years of profit, what does that say about the source of those profits?
Let us not forget what the Supreme Court has already clarified: lenders and brokers used unfair, commission-loaded agreements that inflated the cost of credit for millions of drivers. The wrongdoing was real, systemic, and lucrative.
Now that the bill for those gains has come due, the banks claim it’s too much to bear. But the real burden has been borne by the public — by ordinary families overpaying for finance they trusted was fair.
The banks want us to believe that accountability is a threat to stability. In truth, it’s the opposite. Trust precedes trade. Without justice, there is no trust — and without trust, there is no sustainable growth.
If that means some bad banks decide to leave Britain, let them go. This country should never be held hostage by institutions that treat integrity as optional. Britain’s citizens must come before the interests of bankers and shareholders who built their wealth on exploitation.
The FCA’s redress scheme is not an act of punishment; it’s an act of restoration. It draws a line under misconduct and begins to rebuild the only form of capital that truly matters: trust.
Do I have sympathy for the bankers? Only for those who find the courage to reform their institutions and remember what banking was meant to be — a public service, not a private racket.
Until then, justice must not bend to convenience.
Join us at the Academy of Life Planning.
Let’s raise capability and integrity — together.
Because only when products and services are structurally trustworthy can consumers truly be free.
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