31 DECEMBER 1994, Page 20

The first lesson

YOU WANT to overdraw, or to mortgage your house or insure your life? Goodness, how old-fashioned you must be. What you are is a potential member of a delineated socio-economic segment. If you pass the credit-scoring test and your postcode does not draw a bleep from the computer, you may be marketed a financial services prod- uct. Andreas Prindl is old-fashioned or advanced enough to disagree. He is the London-based American chairman of a Japanese bank and this year's president of the Chartered Institute of Bankers (coming after a succession of eight bankers from the High Street) and he wants a Financial Ser- vices Institute. Banking, insurance, market- ing, the securities business, investment ana- lysts, corporate treasurers and secretaries — all have their own institute already, but his would provide a foundation course for

them all. They need (he says) a broadly based education in the underpinning stan- dards and philosophy of financial services. Lesson One: their pupils are guardians of the nation's savings, which are not just another consumer product. That now needs to be taught.