A "toxic" and "aggressive" culture inside British banks that led to scandals such as fraud in the asset based finance industry will take a generation to change, a report says.

A culture that was decades in the making will take years to unwind, the joint study by Cass Business School and think tank New City Agenda concludes.

 

It estimates that poor standards have cost the UK industry £38.5bn in fines and customer redress over 15 years.

The banking industry said it was "striving hard" to rebuild trust.

The report found that at least £27bn of the £38.5bn in fines was due to mis-selling of personal protection insurance (PPI).

In the six years between 2008 and 2014, banks received 21 million complaints, it said.

Over two decades "an aggressive sales culture took hold in retail banking," with staff in some branches receiving cash bonuses, iPods, or tickets to Wimbledon for hitting sales targets, it said.

Those that failed to hit targets "were humiliated by having cabbages and other vegetables placed on their desks," it added.

Long journey
 
"A toxic culture which was decades in the making will take a generation to turn around," said Conservative MP and New City Agenda co-founder David Davis.

Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, who sits on the New City Agenda advisory board, said: "It is clear that much more needs to be done by all stakeholders for trust to be restored in our financial institutions."
The archbishop said that "huge fines" levied on banks in November in connection with attempted foreign exchange rate manipulation "illustrate the length of the journey of culture change that still needs to be travelled".

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