What Looking Inside a Bank Archive Can Tell Us About Modern Finance

Tracy Alloway (0:09)

Hello, and welcome to another edition of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:13)

And I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:15)

Joe, do you know the one thing that I love more than finance and markets? I'm curious what you'll say.

Joe Weisenthal (0:28)

I'm just gonna say no.

Tracy Alloway (0:31)

Okay, that's the safe answer. All right, so I really like history.

One of the things that I like about this particular podcast, other than the fact that I get the chance to talk with you for 20 minutes every week, is the fact that we can go back in time and every once in a while kind of delve into the history of finance and markets.

Joe Weisenthal (0:53)

I love the history of finance and markets. I find, it's kind of like with language, how etymology helps us understand certain aspects of the present better by seeing how these words evolve.

I think there's a very clear analogy with the history of finance and economics. Seeing how some various institutions evolved can help us understand their structures better today.

Tracy Alloway (1:17)

Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. So what if I told you that on today's podcast, we are gonna have an almost perfect synthesis of history and finance and markets?

Joe Weisenthal (1:28)

I would tell you I am very excited for this conversation.

Tracy Alloway (1:32)

Okay, all right, so am I. So today we are actually going to talk with a woman who is an archivist for the Royal Bank of Scotland. And I don't know about you, but I was kind of surprised to hear that RBS, as the bank is known, actually has an archive at all.

Joe Weisenthal (1:50)

I would not have guessed that at all. I mean, it sort of doesn't surprise me maybe that banks have libraries and that there's some history stored at them. But the idea of a historian or an archivist at the bank sort of whose job it is to collect the bank's history is not something I would have guessed existed.

Tracy Alloway (2:11)

Yeah, and I have to say, if you go on RBS website and take a look at some of the items that they have in their archive, and we're gonna talk about this later in the show, but they have some really fascinating, fascinating things.

Things like customer ledgers that were kept during the Great Plague or the Crate Fire of London, old sort of filing systems that the bank used hundreds of years ago. And I have to say, this is one of Britain's oldest banks, so it's gonna be really, really interesting to hear from her.

Joe Weisenthal (2:41)

Well, I can't wait, so let's get started.

Tracy Alloway (2:52)

All right, so our guest for today is Ruth Reed. She is the Head of Archives and Art for the Royal Bank of Scotland. Ruth, thank you so much for joining us.

Ruth Reed (3:01)

I enjoyed these two, thank you.

Tracy Alloway (3:02)

So maybe just to begin, could you describe for us exactly what RBS's archive is, what it looks like, where it's kept, and what your role in terms of being an archivist actually is, because I can't imagine there are many people out there who have that job.

Ruth Reed (3:22)

Yes, so to start with physically what it looks like and where it is, we're in a pretty anonymous looking warehouse on the western edges of Edinburgh. From outside, you'd never really guess that it was a historical archive. And what we're keeping inside is the historical records of the Royal Bank of Scotland group. So that includes quite a lot of present day banks. There's the Royal Bank of Scotland itself, but also NatWest, which is a major name. We've got some private banks, all sorts of different businesses. And actually, more than 200 historic banks that have come together over the centuries to make up those present day names.

These are not operational records that the bank needs to keep to do business now. These are the very few records that we've decided to keep forever because they tell us who we've been and therefore who we are.

My job in the archives could probably be summarized as capturing, protecting and using the history of the bank and the historical records that unpin that.

Joe Weisenthal (4:21)

So are these items in the archives things that the bank had held for a long time and then at some point said, oh, we should formalize this in an archive? Or did the bank say we should have like sort of an archive of history or banking history and then go about finding the items that would make up that archive?