This report explores the wider lessons of the recent LIBOR rate-fixing scandal.
INTRODUCING DEMOS FINANCE
Ever since the financial crisis of 2008, there has been a clouded and polarised debate over the role and the future of the financial services in the UK. The public and politicians distrust the sector but know little about it; the financial services industry itself feels unduly victimised. With the world still reeling from the effects of the crisis, politicians, the media and the interested public need a reliable source of objective, measured and easily comprehensible analysis of the financial sector.
Demos Finance has two specific aims: educating these groups on the day-to-day activities of the financial sector, so enabling them to engage in informed debate about the sector; and analysing policy as it relates to the financial services industry whilst identifying how to maximise the sector’s benefits to the UK economy. Based as a discrete research unit within the established and well-regarded think tank Demos, Demos Finance will produce original research reports, expert commentary, insight and analysis on the most pressing financial issues of the day. It will generate new ideas and public policy solutions but it will also help to explain and ‘translate’ complex arguments to a non-specialist public in plain, jargon-free prose.
Demos prides itself on being a wholly independent and non-partisan political think tank. It has established a reputation for high quality research across a range of fields and an ability to maximise the impact of that research with media outlets and policy makers. The UK needs an organisation that provides in-depth analysis yet can still communicate lucidly about complex issues with mass audiences—it needs a financial services think tank.