What is a Better Mousetrap?
“Build a better mousetrap”, the old proverb runs, “and the world will beat a path to your door”. It is a comforting idea — that for every problem there is a design clever enough to solve it, and that the reward for cleverness is assured.
The phrase in relation to regulation stuck with us, from a very early experience at the Bank of England, when Lyndon was asked to lead a very small team of very talented analysts to create a more quantitative and objective method of setting capital requirements for the largest banks. After a very long meeting that set out the objectives of the project, a senior supervisor and the final customer summed it up by saying, "What we want is a better mousetrap".
Since that moment, we have been involved in many projects to improve regulation and its frameworks, but we always remembered the first time we were asked to build a better mousetrap.
Lyndon Nelson has extensive financial regulation experience across all its disciplines.
He is a recognised thought leader in crisis management and risk, both as a chief risk officer and as the accountable executive responsible for operational resilience and stress testing. He has chaired committees across institutional and global disciplines.
At an international level, he is an FSAP Assessor, Senior Technical Expert and Visiting Scholar for the IMF. He carries out similar roles for other organisations; he was a member of the Basel Committee and the Financial Stability Board’s Standing Committee to Assess Vulnerabilities.
Lyndon is very firmly committed to sharing knowledge and experience from Global Technical Assistance and University Lecturing (mainly at London Business School) to coaching and mentoring.
Gavin Stewart is a well-established commentator on regulation. He spent 27 years working for financial services’ regulators (Bank of England, FSA & FCA), holding a wide variety of roles including as a Bank of England Supervisor, FSA Head of Strategy, Planning & Performance, and FCA Chief Risk Officer.
After leaving the FCA, he joined Grant Thornton, where, for 3 years, he posted a daily blog on regulatory developments and presented a monthly podcast, as well as writing articles and guesting on other podcasts. He left GT in 2023
