Lloyd's of London is proof that big financial institutions can change their ways. After scandal and near-collapse in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the insurance market these days does roughly what it is supposed to: meet big insurance liabilities as they fall due without toppling over.
They still pay themselves handsomely at Lloyd's – there was a kerfuffle earlier this year when bonuses for top executives rose in a loss-making year caused by a series of natural disasters – but we're not talking mega banking bucks.
It was interesting therefore to hear John Nelson – a long-time investment banker but now the new-ish chairman of Lloyd's – give a frank assessment of how much change is still required in the financial services industry. At Lloyd's annual City dinner on Wednesday evening, he called for the culture to be fixed "fundamentally and honestly", implying that the penny has still to drop for many.
"What we've heard a lot of in the last few years are pretty unconvincing claims in public that banks, for example, have cleaned up their act while in private they seemed to be waiting for the storm to blow over and return to 'business as usual'," he said. "Well, I don't think it is going to blow over."
And this: "The boom in credit and consumerism which fuelled growth from the Big Bang to 2007 is over. We have to find a new model. Any board which is not able to get this, will, in my opinion, be in trouble, both reputationally and commercially."
Many bankers in the boom time "believed their own spin" that they were "economic heroes", continued Nelson. And "the problem has been that they have recently been receiving the sort of financial rewards which rightly belong to the capital providers themselves."
OK, the rhetoric is a long way from being a call to arms. But, from a senior City establishment figure, it is vastly more impressive than the common knee-jerk refrain that lessons have been absorbed and that the outside world just needs to be patient.
