Looking back, Steve Weston says, that Volt Bank, an innovative new player that intended to crack open the Australian banking oligopoly, was well positioned to show that banking could be done in a better and more ethical way. Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be. 

“There was no one else in Australian banking that was doing what we were doing. We built something that didn’t exist elsewhere,” Steve says.  

“I’m proud of so much, but I’ll take to the grave that feeling of disappointment of having to close the doors. We were so close to a full launch and being able to show everyone what we had built.” 

It’s this kind of benevolent aspiration that characterises Steve, Volt’s founder and chief executive. The very same thing that prompted former customers to write to him, not in anger but in sympathy, following the collapse of the neobank in June last year.  

Volt Bank returned $100 million in deposits to all customers and handed back its banking licence after it couldn’t raise enough capital to scale up its operations, leaving 140 staff and a despondent Weston in the aftermath. Everyone was disappointed.  

“I got a lovely note from a guy… his dad is 96 years old and had put $240,000 into a Volt Bank account a couple of years ago as an inheritance for his grandkids. He opened his account using his phone without any help.” 

“And his father told him how disappointed he was that Volt was so great and that they were closing down, and he’d had to take his money back.” 

Rewind three years to January 2019 and North Sydney-based Volt Bank had become the first Australian startup to get a banking licence, following a rethink of the rules under the Morrison government prior to the damning findings of the 2018 Hayne Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry.  

Steve and his team were determined not to squander an opportunity to offer Australians a better and fairer banking experience, building what the AFR described as “arguably the best mortgage lending platform in the industry”. Remarkably, Volt Bank’s innovative technology could issue mortgages in just 15 minutes as opposed to several days with most lenders. 

Organisationally, Volt remained in the pilot phase and never opened its deposit book to the public, but the neobank did forge tough-to-secure industry partnerships with big names like PayPal, Cotton On and AFG.  

There was a lot at stake, Steve remembers, in building something that could compete against established lenders like the powerful big four, but with prior positions at NAB, St George and more recently Barclays on his resume, Weston felt ready to give it a go.  

Since arriving back in Australia in 2016, Steve had been vocal about the negative behaviours and systems he witnessed in the UK being repeated here in Australia. In 2017 at a Banking and Finance Oath conference, he implored the audience to consider necessary changes to ward off mistakes that were being made here that he had seen in the UK including lack of transparency, fairness and poor customer practice. 

Not only did Steve seek to rethink banking, but he also sought to provide staff with an innovative and embracing environment where they could live and work within the values that Volt was offering to new customers.  

“We made it fun like many fintechs, we did yoga and meditation, we had beers and the like,” he recalls.   

“But more importantly, we were also about changing the world and doing things in a different and better way … there were great people on the team – not just technically smart, but good people who would walk over broken glass to make a real difference to society.” 

“Our ambition and values were genuine, they weren’t just words on the wall. Our customers, business partners, shareholders, staff and even regulators could see and feel the different approach we were taking.” 

Whilst Volt Bank had raised over $200m, to scale up it needed to raise significantly larger sums.  

Turbulent market conditions – including the post pandemic economic downturn, Ukraine invasion and climbing interest rates the world over – and the 20% cap on single shareholders in Australian banks saw scores of large potential investors steer clear of investing in the Aussie neobank. Steve says they looked everywhere for capital, leaving “no stone unturned”. 

Unable to raise the capital it needed, and the board voted to fold the bank on June 29th.  

Steve says a fold is about so much more than a shortfall of capital, in banking or beyond – it’s about making the tough decision after weighing up ethical considerations. He hopes that other challenger banks will get an opportunity to bring the sort of change to the Australian banking market that the public is so keen to see. He says that is not just about offering fairer pricing and better service levels, it’s about bringing improved ethics to banking.    

“When we talk about ethics, it’s not just about the issues highlighted in the Royal Commission like breaching regulations and charging dead people,” Steve says.

“It’s about not telling customers that you are going to put their interests at the heart of everything you do and then pricing products that only favour new customers. Banks can price products as they see fit but they should be far more transparent when the interest rates are not as good for loyal customers; the same ones that are supposedly being put at the centre of banks post-Royal Commission more ethical approach.” 

Steve says he was comforted by the fact that almost all 140 staff at Volt went on to be snapped up by finance and tech titans ANZ, Commonwealth Bank, Xero, and Atlassian, and often with higher salaries too, he adds.  

“We had more than 100 companies approach us, saying ‘we’re happy to take your staff’, including big banks, small banks, tech companies, retailers – many did pitches to the staff,” he remembers. 

“And as it turned out, we didn’t only help our staff polish up their CVs and fine tune their interview skills, we also helped staff articulate the value they would offer to new employers.” 

It’s this empathetic duty of care from Volt’s management that set the neobank apart – and Steve hopes that despite Volt not being able to continue under its own steam, that its impact will bring a positive impact to society.  

“We spoke with our staff about taking their learnings from Volt about doing the right thing, to their new employers. It means Volt will have a positive rippling influence on a variety of industries, about how you should work – the culture, the ethics, and the integrity.”

The pain and shame of failure is often sought out by venture capitalists and business leaders in the US. It is viewed positively and seen as an opportunity for learning. Steve himself remains as determined as ever in the wake of Volt Bank’s collapse to shake up an industry mired by a reputation of misconduct and this time; he comes armed with the potent learnings of a failure done ethically. Whether that is embraced in Australia is yet to be seen. 

“We were, in some ways, a poster child in terms of ethics, governance, compliance, openness … And like I said, the feedback from people was overwhelmingly positive, but we just couldn’t raise the capital we needed,” he says.  

“I still have a fire in my belly to do right by society and it’s now burning more than ever because I’ve got to redeem myself and I’ve learned so much.”  

And what of Volt’s industry-first 15-minute mortgage technology? Steve says, a sales process is underway. He’s hoping the technology can find a home and deliver improved outcomes for customers, something he admits will be an “interesting feeling” after the rise and fall of Volt Bank. 

“On the one hand, that would be a kind of validation of what Volt’s tech was going to deliver, and on the other hand, it’ll be: ‘Why the hell couldn’t we raise the capital and have done it ourselves?’” 

Australians donated a record $1.16 billion last year but our mega-rich are laggards on the world stage for giving. Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury, Andrew Leigh calls for Aussie billionaires to think less about their backyard size and more about their philanthropy. 

An Australian-first report from the Centre for Social Impact (CSI) delved into who was giving and how much in 2021, finding a measly 2% of the top earners in the country gave a higher proportion of their income than the everyday Australian.  

That’s despite the wealthiest 200 people owning 3.8% of the country’s wealth – some $555 billion – with the top five owning $143.28 billion alone. That means Australia’s giving total is 0.81% of the country’s GDP, behind Canada at 1%, half of New Zealand’s at 1.84%, and less than a third of the US’s, at 2.1%. 

Indeed in the US, 90% of people earning over $1 million make tax-deductible donations, compared to only 55% of Australians earning the same amount. Why? The wealthy in Australia just aren’t thinking about giving enough, Leigh tells The Ethics Centre. 

“I want the main topic of conversation among Australia’s successful business leaders not to be the size of your yard, but the impact that you’re making with your philanthropy – where your giving is going, how it’s changing lives, how you’re managing to have a transformative impact beyond the business,” Leigh says. 

“I’m reaching out to many business leaders who are pioneers in terms of corporate philanthropy, and just asking them a simple question: ‘If you were in my shoes, how would you look to maximise impact giving in Australia?’” 

And as the country emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic into a time of economic uncertainty with the cost of living surging, Australia’s charity sector faces new and frightening challenges in providing care to our most vulnerable.  

Put simply, “there are more people to help and fewer people who are giving,” Leigh says.

Four out of five community sector charities struggled with an increased demand for services during the pandemic, the CSI report found. About half (54.9%) of aged care charities and income support charities (48%) made a loss or a small surplus in 2021 (whereas 44.2% of religious charities and 41% of emergency relief charities made a surplus).  

“Our goal of doubling philanthropy by 2030 really is one that sits outside the business cycle. We want to permanently increase the level of generosity of Australians, not because we want government to step back, but because we think these challenges are so busy that government can’t do it alone,” he says. 

And there’s plenty of reason for optimism, Leigh says, amid a growing list of billionaires parting with their wealth in the name of civic responsibility. Last December, Australia’s richest man and Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes and his wife Annie Cannon-Brookes vowed to invest $1.5 billion of their personal wealth to financial and philanthropic ventures aimed at fighting climate change.  

Overseas, Bill Gates has pledged to part with “virtually all” of his wealth, while Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg made a 2015 pledge to donate 99% of his Facebook shares to charity. In September, Patagonia’s founder donated his entire company to the fight against climate change. 

“I think it’s really apparent that a lot of the successful technology entrepreneurs in Australia have the mindset that they don’t want to leave most of their wealth to their kids. They want to give it back to the community,” Leigh says. 

So how can Australian businesses emulate this groundswell to give? Consecutive lockdowns saw a reduction in corporate volunteering and pro bono services, replaced by corporate investments of products and cash. Leigh says this is a valuable opportunity to evolve our concept of giving into “impact giving”. 

“We’re actually seeing quite a shift in corporate volunteering away from the sort of ‘let’s go and paint a fence on Friday’, to ‘let’s match up our skills to what the sector needs’ – more planned and more intentional corporate volunteering,” he says. 

Leigh continues there is an abundance of unused corporate volunteering hours in the economy, and the MP has been meeting with businesses and the philanthropic community to discuss the smartest way to give back – the key to this, he says, is thinking about one’s “comparative advantage”, the special sauce that the next firm doesn’t have. 

“The free training that’s being provided to community organisations by Canva, for example, allows designers from disadvantaged backgrounds to learn IT and design skills and get better earnings as a result. That’s something that only Canva can do.” 

Leigh says for him it comes down to “putting the S back into ESG” – for Australian corporations and the billionaires that head them up to think deeply about the value of their social impact on Australia’s most needy.

“Let’s encourage a race to the top in supporting community organisations,” Leigh says.

Businesses make up around two-thirds of psychic Denise Litchfield’s readings. The Australian’s clairvoyant method “looks into the energy around their business and sees if a project needs tweaking”.

For instance, she tells journalist and author Gary Nunn, she once spotted an error in an email sequence that purportedly saved a person “thousands”. 

Nunn’s book, The Psychic Tests, delves into the multi-billion dollar industry of predicting the future using what we know, and why humans are so keen to do so. A healthy sceptic, Nunn was astounded to learn psychics are called upon by everyone from your average Joe or Jane right up to CEOs and even presidents. 

Former BBY chairman Glenn Rosewall, who oversaw the largest failure of an Australian stockbroking firm since the financial crisis, allegedly asked a psychic advice for wealth clues for four years, including insights about the stockbroking firm’s astrological charts, hiring staff, and budgets. 

Even former US president Ronald Reagan and wife Nancy called upon astrology to guide their schedules in what was called “the most closely guarded domestic secret of the Reagan White House”, though it was not used in forming policies or decision-making, Reagan assured the public. 

Cash-hungry mysticism aside, the powerful seeking predictions speaks to a deeply-held human emotion to prepare oneself for the future’s challenges. But as we enter into an era with several of what Adam Tooze dubs overlapping “tipping points”, we may find no amount of looking back and learning from our mistakes will help. 

Tooze, a British historian and Director of the European Institute, told The Festival of Dangerous Ideas that there is “a fundamental paradox at work” – that is, “a desire to work from history, the sense that we can go nowhere else for inspiration, but to our past experience” to equip ourselves for what’s coming. 

But, Tooze continues, “this is the issue of tipping points – that fundamentally oppressive sense that we live under in the current moment – that we are years, weeks, possibly hours away from some transformative event that is going to change the world, like the pandemic did to us in a matter of days in early 2020”. 

Fast-forward to now and still-deadly pandemic, a rapidly heating planet, a war in Ukraine, and several key nations including the US and EU careening towards a recession next year doesn’t exactly make building a plan for the future straightforward. But that’s exactly what Treasurer Jim Chalmers did when he crafted the Albanese government’s austere first budget last month. 

While in opposition, Chalmers told the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry that we have just lived through “the weakest decade of growth since the 1930s, stagnant business investment, productivity and wages, growing debt,” while simultaneously facing uncertainty about “the consequences of floods and war, when interest rates will rise, the challenges of falling real wages and skills shortages – all against the backdrop of a lingering pandemic”. 

This, Tooze says, cuts to the bone of the problem of trying to predict the “radical future”. “What would it actually mean to craft policy which addressed the radical novelty, which our best guess suggests what the future holds in store?” he asks. 

Sure, Tooze continues, we “entrust this task to experts, it could be their job to prepare endlessly for this radical future that will be radically different”. But, he says, it’s an incredibly oppressive burden that can “destabilise your sense of normality, it tends towards the apocalyptic, it tends towards almost a fantastical notion of the future”. 

“And if it’s the difference between the past and the present, that opens up the space of history, then learning from history is going to be an inherently doomed exercise from the very beginning,” Tooze says.

Perhaps it is up to our private sector to save the world. Elon Musk might be making headlines for his disruptive leadership at Twitter (including an exodus of three-quarters of the staff), but Tesla remains one of the world’s most valuable companies in the world and the number one most valuable automaker, with a market capitalisation of more than US$840 billion. 

How? By breaking new ground, rather than looking back, in accelerating the world’s transition to sustainable energy with electric cars, solar and integrated renewable energy solutions for homes and businesses, taking strides to slash the world’s automotive emissions (which make up 10% of Australia’s total) and cashing in along the way. 

“After all, one person’s unsolved issue is another person’s business opportunity,” as Tooze put it.

But is appointing brainy futurist technocrats like Musk or successful Wall Street billionaires like the newly-minted British PM Rishi Sunak the solution to an unclear future? Tooze says it brings up a whole lot of other questions – namely whose interests would they really be serving, and how could we be sure they were drawing “the right inferences” from the past? 

“The financial interests which are doing that job for them really have free rein for those elites, we would need them to be acting in a vacuum of social power, we would need them to be free to enact as it were, the technocratic logic, the derivations of the past, the present and the future … that we want to see them doing,” Tooze says.  

If there’s one thing we can take from the past with confidence, he continues, it’s English economist John Maynard Keynes telling the BBC back in 1943 that “anything we can actually do, we can afford” – we are “immeasurably richer than our predecessors”, Maynard Keynes asked. So why does “sophistry, some fallacy, govern our collective action”? 

In other words, Tooze says, we have the money and we have the brains to solve our challenges. Reimagining the system may remain a lofty goal for idealists, but the self-determining reality is that it comes down to the individual. “The problem is actually concerning ourselves getting our act together to do the things,” he says.  

We have the money and we have the brains to solve our challenges. Reimagining the system may remain a lofty goal for idealists, but the self-determining reality is that it comes down to the individual.

“We will make shifts, we will look for compromises, we will find hustles. We’ll differ, we’ll react, we’ll adapt, we’ll crisis fight, we will ameliorate, and we will slouch, not towards utopia or disaster, it seems to me, but potentially, possibly, towards coping,” Tooze concludes. 

“The central question that I think we need to focus on is this issue of timing. Is it going to be enough? Is it going to be fast enough? … Will we be able to keep pace with this reality that we face and that preoccupies and concerns us all?”

Tune into Adam Tooze’s FODI discussion, F=fail