Ethics in business - the importance of ensuring firms act ethically in the way they conduct business to the benefit of customers and staff - has become an increasingly key topic, not least within the banking and finance industry.

Together with city law firm Linklaters, UK Finance has this morning published an online guide to the legal, regulatory and otherwise codified expectations for firms and the individuals within them to be steered by ethical principles in determining the way in which they conduct business. The guide is not intended to set new standards, or interpret those of others, but instead to provide an overview of the various obligations. In each case it seeks to provide an insight as to why a particular issue needs to be considered. While some of the requirements in question are stipulated in statute or regulation, they are as often or not open to discretion, couched more as recommendations seeking to influence rather than instruct the way in which individuals within companies behave.

We have structured our commentary around four themes that strike us as being of relevance when considering organisational ethics, namely a firm's approach to:

• Leadership, governance systems and controls, which are clearly vital to the development of a good culture conduct
• The workforce, with issues marshalled in terms of an employee's lifecycle and experience within an organisation
• Customers, again by reference to a typical lifecycle, in this case from product design to the ongoing relationship
• Other stakeholders, including shareholders, regulators and the wider community

While the themes we talk about in the guide have parallels across the globe, conduct expectations and the ethical parameters in which they are set can often be regional or national in nature. We have therefore based the guide upon requirements set within a UK context. It is designed principally for boards, non-executive directors (NEDs) and senior managers working within banking and finance organisations, bringing together both company law and corporate governance requirements with more of a local flavour, with regulatory and market expectations that in some cases resonate more cross-border or internationally. By definition, it provides a window into some of the contemporary drivers of corporate behaviour within banking and finance, not least the very real sense that a company will be judged as much about the way in which it goes about providing its products and services, as those products and services themselves.

The closing pages within the wider community section, on sustainable finance and corporate social responsibility, point towards the expectation that greater emphasis be placed upon environmental and social responsibility, with inter-governmental, regulatory and industry-based initiatives each referencing the need for these to be integrated in corporate governance, strategy and risk management. 

Should anyone wish for a crash course in UK standards then it should take no more than an afternoon to read the guide from start to finish. However, the same cannot be said of the underlying source material, which easily extends to several thousand pages and which must take several years of experience in which to gain fluency. This can be found in references and links to the most relevant legal and regulatory requirements, plus codes, guides, speeches, enforcement notices and industry standards that all provide an ethical framework intended to shape, but not dictate, the way in which business is conducted within banking and finance.

In putting together the guide, we talked to a number of regulators and standard setters, as well as to a broad range of our members. Each impressed upon us that the focus upon the way in which business is conducted is only going to intensify in the years ahead. While the various elements can be expected to evolve as we enter into an ever more technological and data driven era, our expectation is that the fundamentals reflected in the guide will prove enduring.