Charlie Nunn, chief executive of Lloyds Banking Group When the chief executive of Lloyds Banking Group — the UK’s largest retail bank and one of the biggest recipients of post-crisis bailouts — calls on government to “go further” in deregulation, it’s worth pausing to ask: for whom? Charlie Nunn’s latest comments frame prudence as a … Continue reading Lloyds Says Hoarding Capital Slows Growth — But Whose Growth Are We Talking About?
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The Rules of the Game Are Being Rewritten — and the Referees Are Looking the Other Way
By the Academy of Life Planning As 2025 draws to a close, the Bank of England has sent a mixed message:⚠️ Financial stability risks are rising, yet 🪓 capital requirements for banks are being cut. It’s a move that captures the paradox of modern finance — one hand tightening supervision of shadow banks like Goldman … Continue reading The Rules of the Game Are Being Rewritten — and the Referees Are Looking the Other Way
💠 Captured AI: When the Regulator Becomes the Sandbox
By Steve Conley, Founder – Academy of Life PlanningDecember 2025 | 5 Minutes Read 🧩 The New Frontier — or the Same Old Game? The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has just launched what it calls a “safe space for AI” — a controlled testing environment where the UK’s largest financial firms can experiment with artificial … Continue reading 💠 Captured AI: When the Regulator Becomes the Sandbox
Regulators Finally Blink: The Shadow Banking Stress Test Citizens Have Waited For
By Get SAFE – Support After Financial Exploitation For the first time, Britain’s regulators have turned their gaze toward the murky world of shadow banking.This week, the Bank of England confirmed that giants like Goldman Sachs, Oaktree, Carlyle, and ICG will take part in a system-wide “exploratory scenario” — a stress test designed to expose … Continue reading Regulators Finally Blink: The Shadow Banking Stress Test Citizens Have Waited For
We Don’t Need More Intermediaries — We Need to Democratise Financial Planning
By Steve Conley, Founder, Academy of Life Planning The Industry’s Blind Spot Every few months, headlines lament the “advice gap.” We’re told there aren’t enough advisers, that regulation is too heavy, and that clients can’t access affordable advice. The response? Train more advisers. Build more academies. Loosen the rules. But this narrative misses the deeper … Continue reading We Don’t Need More Intermediaries — We Need to Democratise Financial Planning
💡 When the OECD Calls It a Constraint, We Call It a Recalibration
Why Britain’s New Tax Era Could Unlock Human Capital Growth “A nation can tax wealth and still grow — if it grows its people.”— Steve Conley, Academy of Life Planning ⚖️ The Headlines Mislead The OECD has warned that Rachel Reeves’s record tax rises will “constrain economic growth for years” and “deter saving.”Their logic is … Continue reading 💡 When the OECD Calls It a Constraint, We Call It a Recalibration
🏦 The Rules of the Game Are Being Rewritten Again — and the Referees Are Looking the Other Way
By Steve Conley, Founder, Academy of Life Planning & Get SAFE Initiative The quiet return of deregulation When Paul Thwaite, the chief executive of NatWest, declared this week that the UK is “closer to the start than the finish line” in its mission to overhaul regulation, he wasn’t issuing a warning. He was celebrating. And … Continue reading 🏦 The Rules of the Game Are Being Rewritten Again — and the Referees Are Looking the Other Way
When Algorithms Replace Empathy: The Human Cost of Automated Banking
By Steve Conley, Academy of Life Planning & Get SAFE On Christmas Day, a man received a text message from Lloyds Bank demanding repayment of a loan.He had lost his job during the pandemic, was living in a friend’s spare room, and doing his best to hold his life together. The message arrived just before … Continue reading When Algorithms Replace Empathy: The Human Cost of Automated Banking
💣 When the Bank Runs Dry: What Lloyds’ 2011 Meltdown Reveals About the Hidden Mortgage Machine
In 2011, Lloyds Banking Group — the trusted black horse of the British high street — was secretly broke. Its CEO, António Horta-Osório, discovered too late that the bank had been surviving not on depositor cash, but on borrowed money — “hundreds of billions of pounds from other institutions,” as the Financial Times later reported. … Continue reading 💣 When the Bank Runs Dry: What Lloyds’ 2011 Meltdown Reveals About the Hidden Mortgage Machine
Ireland Exposes What the UK Must Confront: The Hidden Truth Behind Mortgage Ownership
By Steve Conley, Academy of Life Planning A landmark case in Dublin this week has pulled back the curtain on a truth that applies equally here in the UK — most homeowners no longer have a mortgage with a bank at all. In Ireland, Judge Geoffrey Shannon of the Circuit Civil Court refused to grant … Continue reading Ireland Exposes What the UK Must Confront: The Hidden Truth Behind Mortgage Ownership
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