TRYING NOT TO FALL: DOING DIGITAL GOOD

Book Review by Polly Jean Harrison, Features Editor at The Fintech Times

Released as Hardcover on 30 June 2022

DIGITAL FOR GOOD: STAND FOR SOMETHING… OR YOU WILL FALL by Chris Skinner

With the world embroiled in one crisis or another, it has never been more important to ‘do some good’, with environmental, social and governance (ESG) no longer an option but a necessity for every industry, including finance.

All this has led Chris Skinner – an independent commentator on financial markets, best-selling author and all-round fin-fluencer (fintech influencer for those not in the know) to create his new book Digital for Good: Stand for something… or you will fall.

This book takes a look at how banking and finance can play a role in making the world a better place, whether that’s an in-depth lens on the climate emergency and the role banking and green finance has to play, or how fintech can create a more inclusive world for those who live in it.

The message here is clear, we have to change, and Skinner emphasises how technology and finance really can save planet Earth and be ‘socially useful, rather than socially useless’. Banks have a responsibility to do good for society by harnessing the opportunities afforded to them during their journey of digital transformation, fuelled in part by the Covid-19 pandemic. This book is about those journeys, and asks: how can we use digital services and finance to transform and do good for society and good for the planet?

Digital for good focuses on five main themes: digital transformation, financial inclusion, stakeholder capitalism, transparency and purpose.

Skinner helpfully outlines each of these themes at the start of the book, before delving in further. However, rather than being a few hundred pages of purely Skinner’s viewpoint, he instead called upon his friends in the industry – a handpicked group of global influencers, experts and leading authorities – to contribute in the form of essays, chapters and interviews. These contributors include Tom Blomfield, founder and former CEO of Monzo Bank, Jonathan Quin, head of Europe strategy for Ant Group, and perhaps most interestingly, Gail Bradbrook, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion.

These essays and contributions boil down to the view that businesses need to have a higher purpose than just making a profit. Though if you asked any businessmen, profits are a large part I’m sure, and as the book says there must be a balance, but at the end of the day these banks and financial services companies should go beyond the money and want to contribute something else. They should have a purpose.

An aforementioned key theme, the idea of a ‘purpose’ comes up frequently in the book. In fact, Skinner himself writes how he originally intended to title it ‘Purposedriven banking’. It’s clear he believes that companies forging a purpose that current and future customers and employees can relate to is a must. People no longer relate to financial institutions that purely exist for profit, and there are many who believe that banks that only focus on profits to shareholders may fail in the future. They instead need to emphasise returning value to stakeholders in order to succeed in this new world.

Even the tagline of the book, ‘stand for something or you will fall’, is heavily repeated, and succinctly summarises Skinner and his cohorts’ key messages. You don’t need to have a specific purpose, but you do need one. As former CEO of Monzo Tom Blomfield puts it: “The purpose is the why behind any business.” If you don’t have a ‘why’, then your stakeholders will lose interest and you may find yourself without customers. Get a purpose, get values and, most importantly, deliver on them – “you have to walk the walk and not just talk the talk”.

What I appreciate most about Digital for Good is that it doesn’t focus solely on the environment. When it comes to ESG there seems to be a tendency in the fintech industry and wider to concentrate solely on the ‘E’ and all but forget about the ‘S’ and the ‘G’. This isn’t the case here, as while the book does go into detail about green finance, climate change and other very worthy topics, it isn’t actually about the climate emergency. It’s not “pseudobabble, gobbledygook, tree-hugging environmentalism” as Skinner himself writes, but rather focuses on how we as an industry need to do some good. He asks that companies stop funding things that harm biodiversity, the planet and society and instead think of the good they can do.

In all, this book is a fascinating read that gave me a deep dive into a variety of perspectives as to how development in the financial and technology space can and should impact and improve the world. Looking at the problem through the lens of industry experts themselves makes for a captivating and detailed view into where we go next and where we can take action.

It would be difficult to come away from this book and not feel inspired to take action. Whether you’re a bank, fintech or perhaps just an observer, this book challenges you to start the change yourself, after all, someone needs to.