Our audited report and accounts are available on our website. As usual, the balance sheet is strong and liquid. New customers and new lending opportunities find their way to us at a satisfactory rate. Despite a popular trend to automate everything, we believe there will always be some customers who value the sort of human touches we provide.
We are very grateful to Diana Brightmore-Armour, who stepped into the CEO role five years ago at a point when she had moved her focus to build a non-executive portfolio. During her tenure, she has achieved top customer and staff satisfaction scores, driven an IT transformation programme of almost £100 million, and pursued her passions for diversity and inclusion, business development, and many more skills. She leaves the business significantly stronger than she found it. We also congratulate her on being awarded a CBE in the King’s birthday honours.
We welcomed Simon Kenyon to replace her as CEO at the end of June. He comes with a wealth of relevant experience from Lloyds Bank which, coincidentally, is where Diana originally came from. He has recently been consulting at Boston Consulting Group, and we look forward to learning their latest best banking practices.
The Master Charitable Trust (our donor advised fund) is now supporting over 200 families with their philanthropy. In the past year alone, it has facilitated over £100 million in donations through more than 2,000 charitable grants.
To encourage use of our Visa cards overseas, we have eliminated the fees we used to charge for currency transactions.
Customers have been polite and encouraging about my book, Impact Banker. Thank you. It has opened all sorts of interesting doors and invitations to speak. Our customer Samuel Pepys had this to say: “Memoirs are true and useful stars, whilst studied histories are those stars joined in constellations, according to the fancy of the poet.”
This year marks the 250th anniversary of the publication of The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith. It has some good lines, including this: “There is no art which one government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.”
Alexander S Hoare
July 2026
