'Good' archives

Hugo Bänziger, Banque Lombard Odier, Chairman of eabh

Hugo Bänziger is one of six partners at Lombard Odier et Cie. He also chairs the Board of Directors of EUREX (part of Deutsche Börse), which he joined in 2002. From 1996 to 2012, he worked for Deutsche Bank, where he served on the bank’s Management Board, overseeing Treasury, Capital Management, Compliance, Risk, Legal, Regulatory Policy, Corporate Security and Business Continuity.

Hugo also worked for the Financial Stability Board as Chairman of its Disclosure Task Force (2012-2014) and served on the EU’s Liikanen Commission, which reviewed the architecture of the European Banking Sector in 2012.

He is visiting professor at the University of Singapore and a Senior Executive Fellow at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He is a Member of the Assembly of the International Committee of the Red Cross, where he chairs the Audit Committee, and serves on the Board of the John D.V. Salvador Foundation for Street Children.

Catherine Schenk, UPIER

Catherine Schenk is Professor of Economic and Social History at St Hilda’s College, University of Oxford. After completing her undergraduate and Masters degrees at University of Toronto in Economics, International Relations and Chinese Studies, she went to the London School of Economics to complete her PhD in Economic History. Since then she has held academic positions at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, Royal Holloway, University of London and University of Glasgow. She has also been visiting professor at Nankai University, China, and Hong Kong University. Outside academia she has spent time as a visiting researcher at the International Monetary Fund and at the Hong Kong Institute for Monetary Research. She is an Associate Fellow in international economics at Chatham House, London and she is on the Academic Council of eabh.

Connection between solidarity and banking from the Archives of Compagnia di San Paolo
Anna Cantaluppi, Fondazione 1563

Anna Cantaluppi has been the head of the Historical Archives of the Istituto Bancario San Paolo di Torino and Compagnia di San Paolo since 1986. Since 2015 she is the director of Fondazione 1563 per l’Arte e la Cultura, which is in charge of managing and developing the Historical Archives of the Compagnia di San Paolo and promoting studies of the Baroque period. She is a frequent author of publications in two main fields: banking archives and history; modern history and literature (in particular concerning the social history of Piedmont between the 16^th and 17^th centuries). Among her many works, she co-edited the history of Compagnia di San Paolo (1563-2013), published by Einaudi in 2013.

The connection between the banking sector and charitable aims is a significant feature of Italian economic history. Indeed, many existing Italian banks (even the major ones) started as secular or religious institutions with charitable objectives. In the 19^th century, mutual banks and savings banks were set up to provide the populace with accessible banking. In the first half of the 20^th century most of the Italian banking sector became public: even after privatization in 1991, banks maintained a non-profit role through foundations and local mutual banks.

Compagnia di San Paolo is an interesting case history because for 450 years it passed through all these phases. Its virtually uninterrupted tradition is evidenced by historical archives, which is comprised of two main fonds: “Compagnia di San Paolo” (1563-1853) and “Istituto di San Paolo di Torino” (1853-1991). The archives will eventually receive the records of the current foundation: Compagnia di San paolo (1991-).

The original Compagnia di San Paolo, founded in 1563, was a charity that managed the Monte di pietà (pawn shop). As early as the seventeenth century, it became a consolidated charitable, educational, and financial organisation.

With the advent of the liberal state, in 1853, its social and financial activities were entrusted to a publicly appointed council that developed banking activities. After the 1929 crisis San Paolo began a regional expansion, having survived the crisis unscathed mainly thanks to its prudent investment policies. From 1932 until 1991 it was established as a public-law credit institution. In the second half of the 20^th century the Istituto Bancario San Paolo di Torino became a major international banking group.  On the other hand, there was an evolution in the philosophy of the organisation’s philanthropic practices: it was making considerable grants in the health, education, social, and welfare sectors and later was to turn its attention to safeguarding artistic and landscape heritage.

My paper will focus on the connection between the banking sector and charitable aims and its evolution across four centuries through the exploration of administrative and accounting records such as statutes, minutes of the board, treasurers’ statements, ledgers, “censi” (loans allowed by the Church), bequests, balance sheets, etc.

The constant commitment of the Historical Archives in both collecting and drawing up inventories of the documentation and in its research and educational activities, derives from the cultural and civic choice to make its archival fonds available to the academic community and to the general public. Fondazione 1563, which has managed the historical archives of Compagnia di San Paolo since 2012, is promoting online access to its archives: to this day eight fonds are available with inventories and digitalized records (400.000 pages), four libraries, and a digital picture library.

Fondazione Banco di Napoli’s evolutionary archives: From description to narration
Concetta Damiani & Claudia Grossi, Fondazione Banco di Napoli

Concetta Damiani is an archivist who earned her doctorate in Economic History. She has worked at the Historical Archives of the Banco di Napoli Foundation since 2015 and has participated in various projects regarding the enhancement and promotion of archival collections including: the Historical Archives of the San Pietro a Majella Music Conservatory in Naples; the Archives of the ex-Ilva Steel Mill in Bagnoli; the Historical Archives of the ENEL energy company; and the Archives of the Unione degli Industriali di Napoli (Industrialist Union of Naples). Between 2004 and 2011 she was also the Managing Director of the historical archives of the Chamber of Commerce of Naples.

Claudia Grossi has been an archivist at the Historical Archives of the Banco di Napoli Foundation since 2004. She was the winner of a research grant from the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Storici “B. Croce” in Naples from 1999 to 2003, and she has participated in a series of projects aimed at enhancing and increasing the impact of archival materials at many local and regional Archives. She has carried out research on themes regarding archives and the history of the city of Naples and of Southern Italy more generally. She has participated in many conferences and published many articles on related subjects.

This work illustrates the reasoning and the planning involved in the activities surrounding the management and promotion of the collection of documents found at the Historical Archives of the Banco di Napoli. The Archives, part of the Fondazione Banco Napoli, are made up of an uninterrupted series of bank documents from the time of the first ancient Neapolitan Banks until the modern age, continuing throughout the subsequent development of bank organizations in the 19th and 20th century.

Our archival complex is impressively large: 330 rooms, 80 kilometers of shelves, and more than 60,000 binders containing approximately 300 million documents. Within these documents, we estimate that there are nearly 17 million names of account holders just for the eight ancient banks that operated in the modern age. This means that the archives contain an extraordinarily rich patrimony of information, which deserves to receive intense and constant attention in terms of research and dissemination.

The Fondazione has imposed a policy of safekeeping and promotion of the archives, which, following the tradition of protection and safeguarding which was in place during the 20^th century, tends to offer not only pre-research preparatory activities but also new forms of communication that render the archives more accessible. This helps to overcome the idea that the documents are only reserved for an inner circle of experts or specialists.

Along with the management of the archives in technical-scientific terms (document reorganization activities, production of supplementary materials using information technologies, management of new document acquisitions, opening hours for public access, editorial activities), in 2016 a new and extraordinarily innovative project was created. The idea was to develop an overall knowledge dissemination strategy and translate it into a specific vision. Specific initiatives are designed to bring citizens into the archives and to support the acquisition of a memory-identity. That is how the ilCartastorie Archives Museum was created from the Fondazione il Cartastorie. Located in a large storage area of the Archives, the main multimedia exhibition uses images, sounds and video narration to enchant visitors. Il Cartastorie, with its narrated archives, represents an alternative approach to the traditional research archives. This is undertaken in a tour, which, according to the principle of communicating vessels, reinforces and consolidates the value of the documents.

Boers, banks and gold: Financial globalization (1880-1910) and the state of South African financial archives
Mariusz Lukasiewicz, University of Leipzig

Mariusz Lukasiewicz is a lecturer at the Institute for African Studies, University of Leipzig. He completed his PhD in International History at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva in May 2017. The dissertation examined the early history of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange for the period 1887-1899. Mariusz also holds a Bachelor of Commerce in Economics from the University of Cape Town and a M.A. in Global History from the University of Vienna. His current research focuses on the development of South Africa’s economic institutions and financial intermediaries during the mineral revolution of the late 19th century.

Although modern South Africa still contains elements of an industrialising and developing economy, the country (and region) has had a particularly well-developed financial system since the mid-19th century. Despite the distinctive nature and contribution of the South African financial system to economic growth, no specific literature has been able to isolate the financial sector and its development in economic history. Although it must be emphasised that significant industrialisation of South Africa would only take place after the formation of the South African Union in 1910, the mineral revolutions would encourage a particularly narrow development of financial institutions dependent on the gold mines of the Transvaal.

The rapid development of the gold mining industry ensured that the South African Republic, and later the whole southern African regional economy, experienced an economic revolution which would come to be dominated by industrial capitalism. The increase in gold production in and around Johannesburg in 1887 generated a simultaneous explosion of growth in local and foreign financial intermediaries such as banks, insurance companies and brokers, and most significantly, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE). Banks had established themselves in Johannesburg before the opening of the Exchange and provided most of the liquidity to the stock market before the official exchange was established. The direct involvement of banks in JSE operations during the early years of the Exchange was the key to the rapid development of share trade in Johannesburg and the rest of southern Africa.

This paper exposes South Africa’s 19th century financial landscape through the archives of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and the Standard Bank of South Africa. The JSE archives, housed at the JSE headquarters in Sandton, constitute a (nearly) complete set of internal management and member journals of the Exchange. The set of archives that will be used to illustrate the institutional and personal connections between the stock markets of Kimberley,

London and Johannesburg, are the extensive Standard Bank collection, which are housed at the Standard Bank headquarters in Johannesburg. The detailed monthly, annual and managerial reports provide exceptional evidence of the bank’s relationship with the JSE and many of the companies listed on the Official List.

The majority of these primary sources come from a period when South African institutions were geared to the exploitation of Africa’s resources and people. The ideological nuances in all the archival documents used in this paper, their past interpretations and complex interrelations are analysed in the present context of a democratic South Africa. The archival future of South Africa remains uncertain, but this project intends to harness, isolate and make the most of a number of exceptional archival collections, which have been scattered across a few notable financial institutions.

Archive material from the informal financial sector: A moneylender’s records in rural India 
Howard Jones, University of London

Howard Jones has been a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies (School of Advanced Study, University of London) since 2009. Prior to that he was based at the University of Reading where he became Head of Department of the International and Rural Development Department in 2003. At Reading University he was Programme Director for the MSc programme in Development Finance and taught a number of modules relating to Microenterprise Finance and Development Finance. He has an academic background in social anthropology and economics, with research interests in livelihood diversification and change, education, migration and remittances, informal finance and financial inclusion/exclusion. While at Reading, he was principal investigator for three DFID funded research projects examining access to financial services in Ghana and India. He was awarded the Aneurin Bevin Fellowship by the Indian Council of Cultural Relations in 2006 for work in rural finance.

By reference to the lending records of a rural moneylender in Western India, the paper explores what is meant by ‘good’ archives and by ‘good’ financial institutions. Policy makers in India have long thought of moneylenders as ‘not’ good, and through a succession of institutional financial service interventions, have sought to reduce, if not remove altogether, the market share of these financial agents. In more recent years, the paradigm of financial inclusion, by equating inclusion with access to formal sector finance, has further marginalised informal finance and bolstered negative perceptions of moneylenders. Even so, especially in rural areas of the country, the share of outstanding household cash debt sourced from these financial service providers remains stubbornly high. Archival material from the informal financial sector provides unique insights into why this remains the case. It raises questions regarding definitions of, and assumptions made about, financial inclusion, and demonstrates that the study of historically important informal financial service providers is relevant to present day financial sector debate and policy.

The archives of Credit Agricole
Pascal Pénot, Credit Agricole

Pascal Pénot graduated with a master of history and a master of archival sciences. He worked for NATO, where he was responsible for its archives and, later, for the French Foreign Office in Colmar as assistant manager of the Archive office of the French occupation in Germany and Austria after the Second World War. He is the archivist in the service of the historical archives of Crédit Agricole SA since 2016.

The first Crédit Agricole local bank was created in 1885 in Salins-les-Bains in the Jura. Based on mutual society banking, it allows the needs of local agriculture to be financed, which otherwise do not find adequate resources. By this means, farmers get together and thus avoid loans from usurers. It is therefore a creation that meets a very specific need and whose purpose is not financial but to improve French agricultural production and the living conditions of farmers. It was not until 1984 that Crédit Agricole was taken into account by French banking law. The bank previously depended on the Rural Code.

The public authorities supervised and encouraged this new method of financing: in 1894, the law was passed encouraging the creation of local banks throughout the country. In 1899, a new law promoted the creation of Crédit Agricole regional banks that federate the local banks and distribute the annual public subsidies between them. Finally, in 1920, the last step was created with the National Office of Crédit Agricole. It is a public institution that controls and serves as a central fund for all regional banks (private cooperative institutions). This office takes the name of Caisse Nationale de Crédit Agricole (CNCA), a name which originated in 1926. Privatised in 1987, the majority of its capital is now controlled by the regional banks. Listed on the stock market in 2001, it takes the name of Crédit Agricole SA.

The office of historical archives of Crédit Agricole SA is in charge of the archives of Crédit Agricole SA (formerly CNCA) and two of its main subsidiaries: LCL (formerly Crédit Lyonnais) and Crédit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank and its predecessors (Bank of Indochina, Bank Indosuez, etc.). The series of constituent files of regional banks captures the best of the mutual basis of the Crédit Agricole. Constituted by the CNCA in its supervisorial role of the regional banks, these files gather in particular the minutes of constituent general assemblies: lists of first members and underwriters, which illustrate the social composition of this new membership; and lists of administrators and directors. This series is being digitized to allow better sharing of these documents, particularly with the regional banks.

The historical archives of these banks have only recently been taken into account. There was no institution in charge of their management and each regional bank is responsible for their conservation and communication. However, in December 2017, the Maison de Salins Foundation was created. Twenty nine regional banks, Crédit Agricole SA, Crédit Agricole Assurances, Crédit Agricole Immobilier and Cariparma joined forces in this new entity. Based in Salins-les-Bains, its aim is to provide a framework for reflection on mutualism, its history, practices and future. One of its missions is also to pool resources for the management and digitization of the historical archives of the regional banks.

The notions of utility, mutualism and financing of agriculture are still relevant in the Crédit Agricole Group. The Group’s long experience in these areas is notably implemented by the Grameen Crédit Agricole Microfinance Foundation. This institution fights against poverty and financial exclusion through microcredit and social business in developing countries. Founded in 2008 and endowed with €50 million by Crédit Agricole S.A., it now supports 47 microfinance institutions (MFIs), mainly working in the farming and rural sector with high social impact, and 13 social business companies. No fewer than three million people are supported by partner MFIs, principally in South and South-East Asia and Sub- Saharan Africa.

María de Inclán & Elena Serrano, Banco de España

María de Inclán is Head of the Archives and Document Management Division at Banco de España since 2013. After graduating in Geography and History from the Universidad Complutense in Madrid, she obtained master degrees in Archival Studies and Cultural Management, and completed a Programme for Management Development in Public Administration at the ESADE Business School. Before joining Banco de España María worked as an archivist in the Spanish National Archives and the Spanish Parliament. She has also worked as an information specialist at the FAES Foundation and as a senior consulting expert in record management at the consulting firm Indra. She has been with the Banco de España since 2005, first as a specialist in document management and later as Head of the Records Management Unit. She is an expert in record management, electronic administration and digital transformation. She has written several articles on the above items.

Elena Serrano is Senior Archivist at Banco de España. She holds a Graduate Degree in Geography and History from Universidad Autónoma of Madrid and a specialization in Archival Science at San Pablo CEU University. Before joining Banco de España she worked as an archivist at the historical archive of the Royal Palace in Madrid, where she was responsible for the organisation and description of several key historical document. In 1995, she joined the archive of Banco de España. Her work has focused on the identification, treatment, description and valuation of historical document fonds. She has managed several major projects involving treatment of the Bank’s document heritage collections such as the Architecture Plans Collection and the Historical Photograph Collection (currently under development). She is the author of several articles and publications. Her most recent book deals with the historical plans of Banco de España’s buildings.

During the last five years, Banco de España has been responsible for the project “Archive Recovery for Spanish Financial Institutions”. The idea was born out of concern about the potential danger of losing archives belonging to financial institutions. Over the years many archives have disappeared as a result of mergers and acquisitions. The loss of these archives and documents is detrimental to historical research.

The project consists of three phases:

• The Creation of a “Financial Institutions Map” which includes all current and historical Spanish financial institutions including those which have been established through mergers and acquisitions. This phase has been the key to identifying current financial institutions so that the respective archives could be found.
• The creation of a team whose members belong to some financial institutions. One of its tasks is to locate archives.
• Publishing a “Guide of Historical Archives of Financial Institutions in Spain”. Includes the description of archives and a study of the Spanish financial system.

The main aspects of the project have been:

• The location of a large number of unknown bank and savings bank archives.
• Making the archives available for the scientific research.
• Making the financial institutions conscious of the importance of archive conservation.
• Establishing a network in order to increase the individual efforts of institutions.
• Establishing a work method to be replicated in similar situations.

Building society, building an archive 
Sara Kinsey, Nationwide Building Society

Sara Kinsey is a professional archivist with over twenty years of experience of working in and with corporate archives. She joined HSBC in 1993 as the bank brought its archives from Hong Kong to London, and oversaw the professionalisation of the archive unit. In 2010 she became the bank’s Global History Manager, project-managing and editing the award-winning history of the bank by Dick Roberts and David Kynaston. In this capacity she directed the many and various strands of activities around the globe to celebrate the bank’s 150 birthday. In 2016 she joined Nationwide Building Society to set up the Society’s first-ever archive unit and to unlock the potential of a previously overlooked and undervalued archive collection. She is a trustee of the Business Archives Council and was a key player in the production of the first National Strategy for Business Archives in the UK.

In the UK, building societies are the largest competitors to traditional, shareholder-owned banks in the retail market. They operate on a different business model – mutual societies are owned by and run for their members. Nationwide Building Society is the largest society in the UK, and the world, with over 15 million members.

The origins of the building society movement stretch back to the 1770s. The first societies were formed by local people who came together to solve housing issues in their own communities. Their aims were simple: to provide a safe place for savings; and to provide support for home owners and solutions to housing problems. Profits were reinvested in the society, returned to members through preferential rates, and donated to good causes. The same mutual model still stands today, with the same social purpose.

In 2016, Nationwide decided to hire its first professional archivist to bring its own history to life. The society realised that its heritage and its enduring social purpose were major differentiating points from its high street competitors. In the last 18 months, Nationwide has used its archives to produce major broadcast and print media advertising campaigns and to inspire its employees. It has used evidence of its social purpose to underpin its current strategy and external positioning. The archive unit has become a high-profile and valued partner in these initiatives.

My paper describes the transformation of Nationwide from an organisation suffering from corporate amnesia – not even sure of its own foundation date – to an organisation that has put heritage at the heart of its identity, and what makes it different. I will describe how the archives have been used to support and enhance the Nationwide brand externally, to engage staff through internal campaigns, and how the archive unit has won support from senior management for their work.

A responsible business – the archives of the Halifax Building Society and the Trustee Savings Banks
Karen Sampson, Lloyds Banking Group

Karen Sampson is Head of Archives & Museum, Lloyds Banking Group. Karen has 30 years’ experience as a qualified archivist. She worked for Southampton University and London Metropolitan Archives, before moving into business archives, as Deputy Group Archivist at Lloyds Bank, in 1994. She became Group Archivist in 2002 and continued to run the Lloyds TSB archive following Lloyds’ take-over of HBOS in 2009, in the midst of the financial crisis. She took over responsibility for the Bank of Scotland and Halifax Archives, and the Museum on the Mound in Edinburgh in 2015. Karen wrote the first business archives module for the distance-learning archives and records management MLitt at Dundee University, on which she tutored until 2011. Karen has served as Hon. Secretary of the Business Archives Council since 2005.

Lloyds Banking Group comprises three main brands. Lloyds Bank (est 1765) and the Bank of Scotland (est 1695) were both set up to finance trade and industry in their respective geographical areas. Halifax Building Society (est 1852), however, was set up as an investment and loan society, for the mutual benefit of local working people, at a time of crisis in the provision of affordable housing. Those with spare cash could invest it; others could then borrow, using the funds to acquire a house.

Halifax financed a number of working class housing schemes, including Ackroydon in 1861. The 1920s brought a severe housing shortage. The role of the Halifax was pivotal in a series of government-led national house building schemes. It advanced money to developers at very low rates of interest. In all, the Society financed the building of some 14,000 homes – 60% of all the houses built under these schemes.

As well as the archives of the Halifax, Lloyds Banking Group Archives also hold records of TSB and its constituent savings banks, dating back to the early 19th century. These were set up to encourage the ‘industrious poor’ to save for times of ill health, unemployment and old age. TSB merged with Lloyds Bank in 1995, but the brand was sold off in 2013. We still hold the archives, as TSB still forms an integral part of our history.

Although the Halifax was demutualised and TSB was divested, the influence of both can be seen in the Group’s ‘Helping Britain Prosper’ plan, with its emphasis on being a responsible business. An example is the role the Group’s four charitable foundations play. The archives are able to provide proof points that demonstrate that the Group has always helped Britain prosper.