Stephen has based this article on a keynote speech he gave some time ago to a group of small business owners and their bankers.

People running small  businesses frequently feel isolated and do not know where to turn for advice.  A bank and its Small Business Community have the potential to act as a Vital Partner for people who previously would have experienced such a sense of isolation.

This means that we have to invent new ways of communicating including customer-to-customer, customer to Bank, and Bank to customer. "In short I propose that banks must become the centre of  ‘villages’ of local business people, co-operating together as Vital Partners in order to build stronger local economies and communities that sustain and support a calm quiet quality in our domestic and business lives."