Jono, Ben & Megan - The Podcast - BONUS: Bank Of Dave!

Episode Date: June 7, 2023

We talk to the man behind the brand new movie Bank Of Dave!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

So The Bank of Dave, it's a huge movie in the UK on Netflix and it's in New Zealand cinemas right now and we've got the star, well the star of the movie is based upon Dave Fishwick with us in the studio. Good morning, how you doing? Hello, hello. So looking forward to being here and I've got here now in New Zealand, it's just been fabulous. You've been having a good time, you said you're a bit of a whirlwind tour promoting the movie. Yeah, global tour. For those that don't know explain your background yeah my background is i left school at 16 years old absolutely useless no qualifications

whatsoever nothing and i ended up on a building site as a builder's labor on 50 a week and i went from builder's laborer to building the first new high street bank in Britain for over 150 years and then Hollywood turned up and made a movie about it. Yeah so now you're what they're saying a self-made pretty much millionaire as far as it goes the Bank of Dave is the title of the movie it's not kind of a bank but not really a bank because if you say it's a bank you'll go to jail is that right? Well to be honest we've gone for the biggest license, and we fully applied for the license in 2019. And we officially did all the paperwork. It cost $5 million just to apply.

And I'm going through the processes. So what we've done is we've helped pensioners and hardworking people get the best rate of interest on the high street. We then took that money and lent it out to real people and people who can't borrow from the high street bank through no fault of their own. And then the profit, what we do is we pay the overheads and the difference we give to charity. And that's what we've been doing. We've lent out over $50 million. Wow. But I'm going for the big, big license, which will allow me to expand. I've got the license to do all the things i want to do now but i want to become the bank eventually we will get the full-blown license and then we can call ourselves a big bank

the biggest bankers in the game the bank of davis is the title of the movie so this is set up uh in your hometown of burnley uh center of the universe yeah and you even have the premiere for the movie i understand there as well which is great yeah You must be like a local hero there. Well, it's a bit of a tourist attraction now. People coming over the pitch, you took outside Bank of Dev. Back when you did start your financial organisation, we can't call it a bank. Yeah.

When you started, you said you were on $50 a week. How did you initially get money to lend out? Well, what I did is right at the very beginning when I left school, like I said, I'm on $50 a week as a builder's labourer. I went from that to wanting to start my own business. And I didn't have the price of a gallon of petrol, but I wanted to sell cars. But I had no money. So how do you start a business with nothing?

Nothing. Not a penny. What you do is you've got to think outside the box. So I thought, right, I'll go around all the garages locally, and I'll ask every single one of them, have they got an old pot exchange car in the corner that I can take away, clean up, bring them amount of money back that's agreed at the beginning, and anything over that I can keep. And I must have knocked on about 20 different doors

until one said, yes. I brought him his money back, and the difference were mine. I made $50-$60 on that first car, and that was a week's wages back then yeah so i thought right straight back up there give me his money can i do it again of course you can dave you paid me did it again and again and again until i would learn another really important lesson in life which is once you can pay up front you can negotiate a much better deal and then i went from car to car to car then i started with a van with a life

changing thing a mini bus said davechanging thing, a minibus. I said, Dave, I've got a bus for you. I thought, bus? I don't want a bus. They're 50 foot long and 12 foot high, 11 foot wide and tons of seats. And I'm going to take forever to clean that. But I thought, go on, we'll have a go. I bought it, scrubbed it up, cleaned it, advertised it. Today, I'm the largest supplier of minibuses in the country.

So you never know when them opportunities come. But when they come, guys, make sure you grab them with both hands and what Dave said. And so that's how you got your money to begin your... So that's how the money started coming in. And then things just started to get better. So I thought, well, if I believed in these people and I trusted them, why don't I lend them some of my money?

So I lent them the money. They paid me for the bus. They paid me back. And I'm thinking, why don't I lend them some of my money? So I lent them the money, they paid me for the bus, they paid me back, and I'm thinking, this banking malarkey, it's not that difficult. I could do this. So that's how that idea came, and then I thought, well, I can help other businesses, not just buses. So I thought, I'll start a community bank

where we give the best rate of interest to the customer, hardworking people, pensioners, we'll then take that money and lend it to people and businesses who can't borrow from the high street bank and the profit will give to charity. Cost of living, obviously it's a big deal here and all around the world. What do you suggest, have you got any tips, a simple thing people can do to get through these unprecedented times? Well, one or two of the things that really concern me in New Zealand, as they do in the UK, exactly the same, is in COVID, a lot of people took mortgages at very, very low interest rates.

And now interest rates are going through the roof. Now, I feel that the banks have had a very, very good do for a very, very long time. It's time for them to start looking at how they can help their own people. They need to remember that they were there to serve the New Zealand people in the first place. And they need to look at how they can help. And they can help enormously. They just don't want to or they choose not to. And I think that the interest rate is going to carry on going up.

It's going to be more difficult to borrow from abroad. What I'd love to see here in New Zealand is a community bank or various community banks run by different communities like the Maori people and like different areas of New Zealand there's entrepreneurs that have done well that want to put something back into the community so they put their name to it then you know if your money were going locally you'd be a lot more interested in putting money into that bank rather than something that's faceless that's probably going back to America or somewhere else. Because a lot of these big banks are owned by overseas companies.

And I think that'd be a wonderful thing for New Zealand. I'd be very, very happy to speak to people in New Zealand if they was interested in trying to make that happen. Do you think we should set up a John and Ben bank? I think that's the first one. If you're a day late on your payments, we come get your kneecaps. No, I don't think it's...

Have you been listening to what Dave's been saying for the last five minutes? No. Well, it probably goes against everything Dave believes in. Kneecaps for the community. Dave, when do you forecast that the struggle is going to end? Is it going to get easier at some stage?

It's certainly going to get easier. I certainly think it's going to run still for another 12 months, maybe longer, maybe 18 months. It isn't going to be anywhere near a long, long recession. Six months of 12 months of a mortgage doubling is far, far too long. There's going to be a lot of people going to lose the home, and I think that the powers that be could stand in, even if it's just in the short term,

just to ease things out and smooth things out a little bit. But anybody at home, the things that you can do yourself, and I know it's tough, is if you have got some spare money, anything at all, rather than having it in a bank, look at your credit cards. Pay down your credit cards because they'll be so much more than any interest rate you're getting. Try and pay a little bit off your mortgage. Try and pay some payments up front because that'll bring it down. Try and pay your car loan off because that interest rate is definitely going to be because it'll have gone up it will definitely be more than whatever you're getting for your savings in the bank i know it's tough to spend your savings but sometimes that is the only way

to start looking at how you can bring them payments down well uh or you can borrow from the bank at john o'dea you've already I don't want to go into business with you. I've got a nice pinstripe suit. Because we're doing a competition at the moment on the radio, which is live rental mortgage free for a year. The amount of entries we're getting, it is in the hundreds of thousands. Honestly, it's much needed.

It's tough times out there. It shows you. It just shows you that there's so many tough times, but not just here, all over the world. But I just think New Zealand would be very well placed to have their own community banks. What an inspiring tale. It seems like it's such a fascinating movie,

The Bank of Dave. People can see it in cinemas now. Far be it for me to give you financial advice, but you haven't taken a cent in 12 years from your bank. I mean, Dave, come on. Let's talk about this. What? Well, for 12 years i've run it and

i've owned it and i won't take a penny i'll never take a penny i've got six businesses of my own i have all the money i need i don't need to take you don't make money off this bank i'd rather feed the kids it's awesome what you're doing now it's incredible and you're so inspiring you've given us a pockets of wisdom from you this morning so thank you very much for this and everyone go along to see banker dave in cinemas right now thank you so much pleasure to meet you guys