Lovatt acknowledges that a Christian bank would find it hard to know where to invest: an arbitrary list banning alcohol could be rejected because Jesus drank, for example, and green energy is sometimes said to despoil the landscape with wind farms. Nonetheless the bank intends to avoid investments based on war, gambling, harmful drugs, alcohol and tobacco.
The author makes another ambitious claim when he states that the bank might encourage those two whom it lends to behave in a Christian way: not requiring it of them but acting as a guiding light. The bank would have to keep to its own very strict ethical code, including “non-aggressive selling, respect for all staff, paying bills on time, no tax avoidance and an independent ethical audit.” He quotes Robert Barclay (1648-1690), grandfather of David Barclay who helped found Barclays Bank, as saying the company of good people makes you a better person. So the bank might be able to ask potential borrowers ‘do you pay your suppliers on time?’ and question them about their contracts with staff, having a discussion about ways in which the business could improve.
The bank might go so far as to rate borrowers, giving businesses a rating and a logo to use, into which will be worked the assumption that ethical businesses are lower risk, and should therefore pay a lower percentage of profit compared to less ethical businesses. The author does address scepticism, saying in effect that borrowers will be more trustworthy because they would be selected on the basis of already being ethical to some degree, and would feel loyalty in return for the bank’s sympathetic response should they run into difficulty. He also acknowledges that the bank’s high ideals about not forcing a business into bankruptcy are relatively easy to achieve because it is usually the HMRC that forces a business into bankruptcy over unpaid PAYE and VAT returns. In such a case the bank would then take its place in the queue behind the tax office as a preferential creditor, and unsecured creditors would be behind them because “theirs is such a normal and accepted trade risk”, a conclusion unlikely to reflect the response of a small business left out of pocket.
The Quakers and Business Group has in the past published a Statement of Business Principles, which provides specific guidance on managerial and ethical issues that could govern a modern Quaker business, some of which could be adapted to an ecclesiastical organisation[20]. It has also published a separate book, Good Business: Ethics at Work (The Quakers and Business Group, 2000), available in print or online[21]. This book is written primarily for a Quaker audience but sets out principles that are of general concern to those working in business. It also includes some questions that both employees and employers can ask of their working relationship, along with other advice about management and wider discussion of other business practices. Its claims about the impact of Quaker management policies might sound overstated to someone unaccustomed to the concept of faith-based businesses, but everyone can be supported with examples described in this research:
During the early twentieth century, Quakers pioneered better ways of treating people at work that are now accepted as normal practice. Quaker businesses took a leading part in reducing working hours, providing sick benefit, pensions, life assurance and, in some cases, affordable housing.