Hacker Cinema
Bank of Dave
2023 · Film · 107 min
Directed by Chris Foggin
The true story of how Dave Fishwick, a working class man and self-made millionaire, fought to set up a community bank so that he could help the local businesses of Burnley not only survive, but thrive. In his bid to help his beloved community, he has to take on the elitist financial institutions of London and fight to receive the first, new banking license to be issued in over 100 years.
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4 comments on Hacker News
> People start new banks all the time
Is that true in the US? In the UK there was recently a period of around 150 years during which not a single new banking licence was issued. There's a film called Bank of Dave which dramatises the attempts of Dave Fishwick - a businessman from the North of England - to set up a local community bank. It's distressing the lengths that the established banks went to to quash it.
If I understand correctly, he still does not have a licence, although Metro bank did manage to get one in 2010.
Wiki article about the film: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_Dave_(film)
Guardian article from the real-life inspiration for the main character: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2012/jul/12/why-i-opened-bank-of-dave
Banks are the most immune to disruption, because they function so closely with government, and they are nothing without the blessing of government. And the hurdles to create your own bank are very high. Check out this great Netflix documentary "Bank of Dave": A moderately successful businessman decided to start his own bank, just to see if it could be done (and to lower fees for his local community). The results are... pretty much what you'd expect. "You can't start a bank... nobody starts a BANK!" (They just kinda... have always existed!)
There was the Bank of Dave, an interesting experiment a few years back in the UK; I read the book, I think they made a documentary movie too.
In a similar vein, there's an enjoyable documentary called Bank of Dave about a British millionaire trying to create a small bank in his home town. The first part's here: https://youtube.com/watch?v=0fIGZOe-Oa0