The Equalities Act (US) and Equal Opportunities Act (UK) enshrined equal rights of minorities in law across the US and UK. Yet they failed to deliver proportionate representation in this, the most corrupt and prejudice industry of our time. Ask any woman in banking, and she will tell you she has been assaulted. Ask any LGBTQ+ and he/she/they will tell you they’ve been turned away. But ask black, indigenous and other ethnic minorities and you’ll hear nothing.

Rampant racism has turned Banking into a money-printing playground for mediocre white cis-male seniors. Meanwhile the share of BAME / BIPOC staff working in financial services has fallen for 10 years - an industry going backwards not forwards (Financial Times, March 2021). This ubiquity not just of appearance but now mindset in every decision making banking body holds back economies, triggers business to fail, denies whole peoples of progress and serves the inequity that blights our communities and dooms Africa to eternal instability & underinvestment.

I call on the US & UK regulators to ban all those demonstrating racist views - online or offline - from serving in this critical industry.

We have to learn to love our differences, because without uniqueness we are nothing special.

Discrimination is wrong and illegal.

Ian Clarke